Young targets improvement as key skills let Blues down
DAI Young says Cardiff Blues must work on their accuracy as they look to bounce back from defeat in Galway on Saturday night.
Two late tries gave the hosts a bonus-point win as Ellis Jenkins’ return to competitive action ended in disappointment.
The Wales flanker was making his league comeback after more than two years on the sidelines. But Connacht’s strong finish meant there was no dream return to the regional game.
Young’s men were left to rue defensive lapses, handling errors and some questionable calls by referee Andrew Brace as they came away from Ireland emptyhanded.
“Obviously it’s disappointing. You’re always disappointed to lose a game,” head coach Young told the Blues website.
“In the first 30 minutes, we were looking pretty good with ball in hand and defensively we looked pretty solid.
“In the last 10 minutes we started giving away too many penalties, which gave them too much field position.
“They started winning collisions and sneaked two tries before half time, which was a bit of a killer for us.
“Accuracy really let us down on occasions and no matter who you’re playing, if you’re turned over 16 times with 10 of them being handling errors and concede 12 penalties, then you’ll struggle to win games.
“We have to give Connacht credit for the pressure they put us under, but we put ourselves under a lot of pressure as well.
“That’s what I’ve said to the players in the changing rooms.
“We’ve really shown that we have to improve our basic skills to give us an opportunity to come to places like this to win games.
“The commitment and effort was there but, as I said to the players, that’s a given. You don’t expected to be tapped on the back for going out there and giving your best and trying really hard, which they did tonight.
“We’ve shown that we have a bit of work to do and we have to improve our core skills and our game understanding to come away to these difficult places without our
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internationals and win games. That has to be our goal.
“If we want to improve as a team there are core skills that we really have to work hard on.”
The Blues’ hopes of Champions Cup qualification took a knock with this defeat.
They remain in fourth in Conference B, having missed the opportunity to leapfrog the Scarlets in the table, while second-placed Connacht are now even further ahead after securing a bonuspoint victory.
The visitors had been the better side in the first half, with a try from Rhys Carre fine reward for their impressive start.
Two Jack Carty penalties chipped away at the lead, before Jason Tovey restored some of the gap with a penalty of his own.
However, the solid first half was undermined with two defensive lapses late on.
First, the Blues overloaded the wrong side of a ruck, giving wing Alex Wooton a miss-match to exploit in midfield to race over for his first try.
Minutes later, Wooton cut through weak tackles to score again and hand Connacht a 10-point lead at the break.
The Blues stuck in the fight in the second half, with Jenkins putting in a remarkable 70-minute shift. And they appeared to have clawed their way back into the match when Corey Domachowski burrowed his way over from close range, closing the gap to just three points.
However, Connacht quickly pulled away again thanks to some questionable decisions from referee Brace.
After the Blues were deemed to have pulled down a maul that appeared to have been taken down by the home side, Connacht drove over from a line-out that was seemingly not straight. Jarrad Butler was the beneficiary at the back of the maul.
And they secured the crucial bonus point late on, when Abraham Papali’i forced his way over despite Brace getting in the way of a tackle attempt from Max Llewellyn.
THERE were two Welsh rugby wins over the weekend – three if you factor in the Taulupe Faletau and Rhys Priestland-inspired Bath success against Gloucester in the Gallagher Premiership.
The Scarlets can lay claim to most satisfaction after coming up with a performance and a result against Benetton in Llanelli.
A victory also came the way of the Ospreys, if not with the flourish or style to please all.
Cardiff Blues and the Dragons both came unstuck against Irish opposition.
MARK ORDERS winners and losers... assesses
WINNERS TAULUPE FALETAU AND RHYS PRIESTLAND
the
THE temptation might have been for Taulupe Faletau to third-gear it for Bath against Gloucester at The Rec last Friday night.
After all, Wales are playing England this weekend and he wouldn’t have wanted to pick up a bump.
He’d also faced Scotland six days earlier and was feeling a bit battered and bruised at the start of the week.
But coasting or hiding isn’t what Faletau is about.
He turned in a sublime performance that earned him the man-of-the-match award from adjudicator Ugo Monye, who said of him: “He is a magical player.
“You need big men and you need world-class players to step up on big nights. Taulupe Faletau has been magnificent in attack and defence.”
The thing is with Faletau it all seemed so effortless.
Legend has it that at the peak of his powers the Zen-like former tennis player Bjorn Borg had a resting heart rate of 35 BPM.
The suspicion is you could take five off that figure again when assessing Faletau.
He is calmness personified. In the heat of battle against Gloucester he appeared completely unruffled.
Priestland also enjoyed a memorable evening.
Needing to slot a long-range shot at the sticks to win the game for Bath in the closing minutes, the ex-Wales fly-half proved up to the job to secure his side a 16-14 success. It was his 27th successful kick in a row. In the history of the Gallagher Premiership, only Mark van Gisbergen and Johnny Wilkinson (both with 28) have put together longer streaks.
Ice-cool, someone said on social media after the game.
It applies to both of Bath’s Wales internationals.
THREE WELSH OPENSIDE FLANKERS
WHAT can be said of Ellis Jenkins?
It had been 819 days since his last competitive game of rugby, yet his display for Cardiff Blues against Connacht was on another level.
There were two turnovers, 15 tackles, 22 metres made from eight carries, high-quality support play, awareness, lovely hands -- the full package.
The weekend had started with a tough, combative effort from the Dragons’ Ben Fry against Leinster. There are in-yer-face players and then there’s this guy, a nightmare to play against and so good at what he does. Twenty tackles, three possession steals and a dozen runs from Fry were at the heart of his team’s effort.
And then there was Jac Morgan, in outstanding form in his own comeback game for the Scarlets, strong over the ball and a powerful threat in the loose. After the former Wales U20s captain’s first-half display against Benetton, which saw him bag two tries, Tom Shanklin said: “If Jac Morgan has another half like that, he will be called into the Wales squad.”
Little wonder the Scarlets youngster is in demand as he heads for the end of his contract.
RHYS WEBB
IT’S been a tough few weeks for Rhys Webb, what with his being omitted from the Wales squad and the national coach questioning his form. How to respond? Well, let’s just say that two man-ofthe-match performances isn’t a bad way to answer the form question.
Webb impressed for the Ospreys against Zebre on Saturday with his vision, seeing things a split-second before anyone else on the pitch, and his leadership.
It was a case of letting his rugby do the talking.
Is Pivac listening? That we do not know. But it was a fine effort from the Ospreys’ scrum-half.
HADLEIGH PARKES
THE ex-Wales international scored a try on his debut for Panasonic Wild Knights in Japan over the weekend. A lot of people would have raised a glass to that one. SCRUM V BIT ON MIKE EVANS MIKE Evans was the type of man every rugby club needs, one who gives his heart and soul to the collective effort on and off the field. Clubs are always lucky to have his sort on board. In a way such individuals are local heroes.
All this came through in a short BBC Scrum V tribute to Mike, a St Peters RFC legend, who was team manager when The Rocks achieved their famous win over Cardiff RFC in 1993.
He passed away on Christmas Eve, aged 64.
His son Owen Evans spoke movingly and with eloquence about the events of that day and how much his father meant to him, the club and all who knew him. .
It won’t console Owen much, but he did his dad proud.
LOSERS CARDIFF BLUES
DAI Young’s team had their chances to win against Connacht in Galway. They secured more ball than the hosts over the 80 minutes but ended up on the wrong end of a 32-17 defeat.
It’s an understatement to say some of their supporters were disappointed by a number of key calls in the match. There was a line-out that may just have been the most not-straight delivery since Steve Harmison sent the opening ball of the 2006-07 Ashes straight to second slip.
Sadly for the Blues, Jarrad Butler scored from the back of a subsequent maul. Credit Bernard Jackman in TV commentary for calling out the accuracy of the throw.
Late on, Abraham Papali’i forced his way over for the hosts, with the score being awarded despite referee Andrew Brace getting in the way of a tackle attempt from Max Llewellyn.
The protests weren’t all one way, it needs to be said.
There appeared to be a forward pass in the run-up to the first try for the visitors which wasn’t picked up.
But the look of disbelief and anger on the faces of some Blues players suggested they felt their team had come off second best on more of the big decisions. Social media wouldn’t have made nice reading for Brace on Saturday evening. But people care about their teams. A lot of the anguish appeared justified.
ENTERTAINMENT IN SWANSEA
IT wasn’t good.
In fact, fixating on a bowl of soup for three hours might have
been more enjoyable. The Ospreys were missing their current Wales internationals and Zebre are not a good team. The fare lived down to expectations.
The sooner PRO14 games are played outside international windows the better.
DRAGONS
SHOULD they have tried to go 80 metres upfield to score a late try that could have won them the game against Leinster on Friday evening? Or should they have done as Sam Davies did and kicked the ball out of play and settled for what was a bonus point?
The assumption is a fair number of their supporters would have wanted them to go for broke.
But it didn’t happen, with the suggestion being that the bonus point might come in handy if qualification for Heineken Champions Cup places is expanded again for next term. It may not be, of course. Whatever, the sight of Davies seemingly operating to orders and kicking the ball out of play was something only hard-headed pragmatists would have enjoyed.
A chance of a famous win was spurned.
For a lot of us, that’s deflating.