Win sets us up for Irish challenge – Dai
DAI Young and his Cardiff Blues side now have their sights set on their Challenge Cup clash with London Irish after their bonus-point win over Edinburgh.
That victory guaranteed them a fourth-placed Conference finish and Young will now have to wait to see if fourth will be enough to qualify for next season’s European Champions Cup, with criteria yet to be confirmed.
Bt he believes it was an ideal warmup for the Good Friday showdown with the Exiles.
He said: “London Irish is a one-off game once again. I’d like to see us play 80 minutes like we have played two 40 minutes (against Edinburgh and Benetton).
“It’s never going to be perfect, you are always going to lose momentum and things will go against you but against Edinburgh we showed real belief.
“When things went against us, we didn’t panic, we kept to the process, we kept to the structure and game plan and came away with a really good performance in the second-half and a really good win.
“Everything we talked about at halftime, in fairness to the players they went out and delivered.
“The spirit and determination to work hard and get better is there in abundance. We have a long way to go, lots of things to improve on but they are a very honest group and they realise that and there’s bags of improvement across the board.
“We are working off a good base, in terms of the boys want to work hard, they want to get better and they are more than happy to put the work in to get better.”
He added: “We talked all week about playing cup rugby. If we want to be the team we all want to be then we will have many knockout games and be in the business end of the season when winner takes all.
“Edinburgh was a good example of that, we played a lot of sensible rugby in the second half and came away with the win.
“We couldn’t have done any more and hopefully it is enough but if it’s not then as the boys have said in the changing rooms we will look at some of the performances when we could have won earlier in the season but let it slip.
“Hopefully it’s enough to sneak in and if it’s not we have to come back harder next season and make sure we are there.”