The Scarlets suffered their first home defeat of the season on Saturday, a 27-15 European Challenge Cup loss to an impressive Toulon.
After the match head coach Brad Mooar spoke to the media. Here’s what he had to say.
Brad, after such a great start, what went wrong?
BM: “Look, we obviously lost the kicking battle in the first half, so many of Toulon’s kicks found grass, either over the top of us or between us and had us pedalling backwards.
“They also plucked a couple of tries out of errors of ours, but that also comes from pressure and I would like to congratulate Toulon on a big victory away from home that they worked very hard for.
“They have some massive men, a big pack and we just didn’t manage to get our game going after the first four or five minutes. We were then chasing in the rain and that is a tough place to be.
“I am proud of our guys in that they kept giving; we scored near the end and after that try the conversations were about scoring again and looking to get a bonus point and then who knows?
“It didn’t happen. We met a very strong Toulon side who taught us a bit about playing at European level. You have to take the positives from that and say what can we learn from them and how they do it.
“We will pick the boys up and look forward to playing London Irish on Saturday.”
How do you now approach the Irish game with qualification out of your hands?
BM: “The same as every week, we will do a full review and look at areas we can get better and get to work.
“We will focus on lifting the energy before going to Reading, it will be an exciting week for us. It is the last week we are together before a break and ideally we will be celebrating a large number of guys making Six Nations squads and getting an opportunity to play for their country.
“I also want to mention the fans. How good are the Scarlets fans? Supporters were walking down the grandstand and saying that they can’t wait to get to Reading next week as well. It is a humbling experience every week to see our fans getting behind this team.”
A word on Dan Jones’s 100th appearance?
BM: “It is a magnificent achievement. I know in cricket there are a number of magnificent centuries played in sides that don’t get to win. He would have loved to have had a victory to celebrate, but there are 99 other magnificent performances to get 100 games and to achieve it at such a young age shows the quality of the man.”