It ‘wasn’t good enough for the jersey’, says Dai after Benetton beating

CARDIFF boss Dai Young admitted it “wasn’t good enough for the jersey” following his team’s humiliating 10-try defeat at the hands of Benetton in Treviso.

It was a desperate end to the season for the Arms Park outfit, who trailed 31-7 at half-time and conceded six more touchdowns after the break to eventually lose 69-21.

“We just looked really tired physically and mentally. No excuse. That’s a disappointing factor,” Young told S4C.

“We didn’t build pressure or momentum and they broke our line far too easy, especially around the forwards. Obviously you can play open rugby, but you have to have the skill levels to do it and we didn’t demonstrate that.”

He added: “It’s been a difficult season for us. People ask me if there have been any positives. Not really. I suppose the only positive is this is our last game.

“We will have to work hard preseason and we have to come better than that because that wasn’t good enough for the jersey.”

“I told the players - if that doesn’t hurt us then we don’t want to be here next year, it’s as simple as that. Unfortunately we’ve now got a long wait until we can put things right.

“It’s a really quiet changing room, but how can you tell if they’re really hurting? We’ll find that out next season when they come out and they need to use that as fuel to get better.”

Following a run of 13 consecutive fixtures, Young admitted his side struggled to cope.

“That was our 13th game on the bounce and it looked like one too far for us,” he told the Cardiff website.

“Fatigue makes a coward of us all, and they’ve been really tired all week. I don’t think they’ve experienced playing 13 on the bounce for a long, long time. Before that they had big periods of not playing and it was certainly a season of extremes.

“We’ve also had extreme performances. We’ve had really good performances and really poor ones. Tonight lies up there with the really poor, but there’s not a lot that we can do about it now.

“We had a backline with an average age of 21. It was great to see them and it’s a glimpse of what’s to come.

“They’ll learn from that, and it’s a big ask to chuck them in against a quality team like that.

“They will hopefully learn from the experience. It wasn’t a pleasant one, but you learn from all sort of experiences.”

BENETTON: Tries: L. Cannone, Albornoz 2, Lamaro, Braley 2, Smith 2, Ruzza Pettinelli. Cons: Smith 8. Pens: Smith.

CARDIFF RUGBY: Tries: Carre 2, Llewellyn. Cons: Priestland 3.