Posted by While Cardiff enjoyed a few weeks off from competitive action ahead of Saturday’s trip to Glasgow as the Guinness Six Nations came to a conclusion, the relentless pursuit of losing bonus points never sleeps.
On the face of it the return to the United Rugby Championship produced a familiar old tale for the Blue and Blacks, with Matt Sherratt’s men staying in the battle for 80 hard-fought minutes, particularly in tough conditions at Scotstoun, but were unable to convert a tight encounter into a winning result. In the end it was a 17-13 defeat to return home with.
That takes it to eight losses and eight losing bonus points in the league this season, but in this specific circumstance it is both impressive and annoying.
The impressive element comes from the fact that Cardiff became the first team to take any points away from Glasgow this season, with the likes of Leinster, Stormers and Benetton all heading home point-less from Scotstoun. Considering the Scottish side had a number of their national team’s Six Nations squad available to them, it’s a good return on the road.
However, the annoying aspect is that the game was there to be won. The Blue and Blacks produced our best defensive performance of the season with an organised and physical display, making 218 tackles at a 90% success rate and winning 13 turnovers. We also won the set piece battle, nullifying the home side’s driving maul threat and putting pressure on their lineout.
In attack we showed flashes of what we can do, scoring a try of the season contender along the way as the three-quarter line linked beautifully for Ben Thomas to go over, but ultimately we did not quite make enough of having the wind advantage in the first half and Glasgow were able to tighten up enough to get over the line with the conditions at their backs after half-time.
We return to the risk of adopting the tag of “brave losers” full-time as another possible win slips through the fingers, but there was enough to like on the night to just kick that concern down the road once more, especially with so many good individual showings.
Rhys Carre put in another huge 80-minute shift, Liam Belcher and Efan Daniel were both effective at the defensive breakdown, Shane Lewis-Hughes was a menace at the defensive maul, Thomas Young’s pace helped him impact both sides of the ball, Mac Martin carried repeatedly, Max Clark was solid at outside centre and Jacob Beetham continued to show growth at full-back.
Undoubtedly the standout though was Teddy Williams who contributed two lineout steals and a mind-boggling 32 tackles on his return from Cymru’s Six Nations squad. Having not seen playing time since the round one loss to Scotland there was the possibility of tackle bag holding ring rust for the lock, but he shook that off with an all-action performance.
Things don’t get any easier for Cardiff with a trip to Thomond Park to face Munster next week, as that tough run-in really kicks in ahead of a few weeks off for European action. The Irish side will likely have some of their Six Nations winning national squad members back available at one of the league’s fortresses.
It’ll need a performance that sees multiple positive elements of our games so far this season click together to produce the best showing of the campaign to-date in order to even produce a losing bonus point, let alone get a good result.
With the rest of the Welsh internationals back available though, and this team’s penchant for surprising, anything is possible.
#TrustTheProcess
Cardiff Rugby Life 