Head coach Dwayne Peel was left to rue inaccuracies in the Scarlets’ game as he reflected on a 24-15 defeat to Cardiff in their opening home BKT United Rugby Championship match of the campaign.
Peel’s side scorched into a 15-0 lead, but a string of errors and two second half yellow cards allowed Cardiff to take a grip on the game to see out the win.
Peel said: “If you look at the momentum swings in the game, we started positively in that first 20-25 minutes and looked full of energy. There were then a couple of momentum shifts in the game that allowed Cardiff into it and they disrupted our breakdown towards the end of that first half. Credit to them they stayed in the fight and managed to get back with two tries.
“In the second half, we were down to 13 men, which wasn’t ideal. From a fight perspective we stayed in that fight in that period and could have gone ahead, but there were too many unforced errors in the end, we were inaccurate and soft inaccuracies as well. Credit to Cardiff, they were physical and someone like Dan Thomas was very good, slowed our ball down which stopped our momentum.”
Peel added: “Beforehand I felt confident we had prepared well. As I said, we started well, we just allowed back to back errors into our game. We started playing in those final 10 minutes, made line breaks, but we were inaccurate beyond the gainline as well
“From my perspective, the positives were, we stayed in the fight, we battled hard when we were down to 13 and 14 nen, but in the end we weren’t accurate enough and left ourselves too much to do.”
Club captain Josh Macleod came through his first match in nine months, with Peel adding:
“It is great to see Josh back, he is a leader for us and I was pleased for him to get 50-60 minutes.
“We have a short turnaround for Connacht on Friday and preparation is going to be key in terms of getting the boys fit and healthy and ready for that game.”
Peel also confirmed that second row Sam Lousi and back Ioan Nicholas will be in contention for the round three clash at Parc y Scarlets.