Scarlets head coach Dwayne Peel admitted patience will be needed with his young players following some harsh lessons in Friday night’s 42-7 defeat to Munster.
The Irish province showed their clinical nature to run out convincing victors against a youthful Scarlets line-up that was reduced to 14 men by the end of the match because of injuries.
Scarlets were right in the fight at 14-7 just after the hour mark thanks to a superb individual try from centre Joe Roberts, but the final quarter was one-way traffic.
Peel said: “For that first 60 or so minutes it wasn’t a classic by any stretch, but we stayed in the fight, some of our scramble defence was good and we took that lovely try by Joe on the hour mark.
“I thought we were in the game then, but they are a good side, they are defending champions and our execution let us down and they smelled blood. It went from being a seven-point game to 20 points very quickly.
“I thought our endeavour was good, there were skills errors we need to work on and be better at and we also had a few injuries, young Harry Thomas, an exciting hooker coming on in the back row and Teddy Leatherbarrow came off and we had to go down to 14 men.
“Munster are a deep and powerful squad, we knew we had to stay in the game for 80 minutes to compete with them, but we dropped away in those final 10-15 minutes.
“You look at the team, Tomi Lewis was starting only his second game in the URC, Harry was making his debut, so was Jarrod Taylor; Eddie and Joe are still a young centre partnership, Charlie was playing University rugby last season; Archie was making only his second start, Efan was playing for RGC last season. There is a lot of inexperience there and they will gain a lot from that game.
“We had a fantastic crowd and the fans will be disappointed, as we all are. My message would be we have a lot of young boys and we have to be prepared to experience some pain at the moment. Everyone is working hard here. I am a Scarlets fan, I have grown up one and grown up around Scarlets fans, we all want the club to be at the top, but at the moment we are going through a period where we have to be patient, we have young players and they need time.”