EDINBURGH slipped to a second straight defeat in the Guinness PRO12 when they lost 14-9 away to Connacht last night after another display where promise was mixed with sloppy mistakes and a dreadful start.

Unlike the week before against Zebre, they did manage to rescue a losing bonus point, with a little help from the Irish who missed two late penalty chances that would have pulled them clear.

The win took Connacht to second place in the table behind Scarlets while Edinburgh remain fifth, although Glasgow and Leinster could overhaul them today.

Alan Solomons, the Edinburgh head coach, felt his team had raised their game from the previous week's debacle, but paid the price for indiscipline, particularly in the opening quarter when Connacht did the bulk of the damage.

"The big factor in the game was the penalty count," he said. "We had six penalties against us in the opening 27 minutes and you can't play like that. They got eight points from a succession of penalties, including a try when our defence from a line-out was poor.

"In the second half there were another two clusters and that has a massive knock-on effect with 10 of the 13 penalties coming from the breakdown. We have to look at those very, very carefully. There were many positive things and we did lose a couple of players with Blair Kinghorn's ankle and Phil Burleigh's calf forcing them off."

Edinburgh fell behind in the opening minutes after giving away a needless penalty just outside their own 22, with Connacht fly-half Jack Carty kicking the first points.

Seconds later they were facing even more of an uphill battle as they failed to pick up wing Matt Healty cutting across at an angle to feed Tiernan O'Halloran for the opening try. What really rankled with Solomons was not just the mistake that left them a man short in the backs but that the line-out that started it all had come from another of those killer clusters of penalties.

Scrum-half Sam Hidalgo-Clyne pulled some points back with a kick after Connacht pulled down a maul, and that seemed to turn the momentum for Edinburgh, who began to dominate up front without being able to cut out the mistakes.

There were a couple of promising breaks from full-back Kinghorn and Hidalgo-Clyne but in the end they had to settle for a Kinghorn penalty – his first points in pro rugby – and a narrow deficit at the break, which Connacht extended soon after the teams returned with Carty's second kick.

As had been the pattern in the first half, Edinburgh's forwards were getting the side into attacking positions but errors stopped them from capitalising. Even when Edinburgh did claw back three points with Hidalgo-Clyne's second kick they handed the points straight back, conceding a penalty at the kick off for Carty to do the business.

Edinburgh had the odd chance to open things up, mainly when they managed to pounce on dropped passes and loose kicks from their hosts, but neither side really looked like engineering another breakthrough and when Burleigh left the field the last of Edinburgh's chances probably went with him as the backs got more and more disorganised.

Connacht nearly managed the final word as the replacements came flooding on and the home scrum started to get on top only for Carty to miss the kick that would have cost Edinburgh a losing bonus point. He repeated the miss when a clumsy tackle from Fraser McKenzie earned the Edinburgh lock a spell in the sin bin and gave Carty a long-range shot at goal. Edinburgh who finished on the attack without being able to break the solid Irish defence.