Kings clash a banana skin, says Blues coach
Wary Cardiff Blues coach John Mulvihill has described his team’s opening Guinness PRO14 clash against last season’s whipping boys, the Isuzu Southern Kings, as a potential banana skin.
The Australian, about to begin his second year as Cardiff head coach, wants his team to reach the PRO14 playoffs.
Last season, Cardiff narrowly lost their opening three games, and it cost them a money-spinning playoff berth.
“We go to the Southern Kings first up, with a bit of trepidation. That’s the banana skin, isn’t it?” Mulvihill told WalesOnline.
“Everyone is saying we should win over there, but they have been to Georgia and played on tour over there, they have played Namibia twice.
“It is an interesting start. It’s one that’s going to keep us up at night, I think.
“But we are preparing well.
“We are going over to South Africa for nine days in all, with a training camp in Cape Town before we go down to Port Elizabeth for the game.
“If you look at it, we lost the first three games last season by a couple of points and we also lost the last few games narrowly.
“But we won about 85% of games in between that.
“We’ve got to make sure we start the season well and play entertaining rugby, which wins games.
“If you win more than you lose, you make finals and if you make finals you’ve got a good chance of winning silverware.
“We lost games we led until the last few minutes and we shouldn’t have,” Mulvihill said.
“In our first three games, we lost against Leinster and didn’t learn and took that into Treviso and Zebre and the same thing happened.
“It cost us the season because we were two wins away from making the playoffs. We have to start well this time.”