Posted by After a long summer of off-field Welsh Rugby Union political wrangling and general disruption, culminating in the Head Coach departing the Arms Park in the week before the first game of the season, it was good to get back to rugby on Saturday evening as Cardiff faced Lions in the United Rugby Championship.
Over the last few years there’s been a theme of somewhat sluggish starts for the Blue & Blacks; a slightly laboured win over Munster in 2022/23, a last-minute defeat to Benetton in 2023/24 and then a real battle past Zebre in 2024/25. Whether that’s been due to disrupted pre-season preparations, squad overhauls or coaching changes, it’s felt like the first game of the campaign is almost used as another pre-season friendly.
There was a fear that would be repeated on Saturday after Matt Sherratt’s sudden departure, plus the feeling that particularly the warm-up game against Richmond had not really offered the squad much in the way of a challenge to got them up to speed.
However, from the first whistle there was an intensity about Cardiff that had certainly been absent in those aforementioned round one games of seasons past. The defensive line speed was causing the opposition problems, backed up by physicality in the tackle, and the attack was accurate, organised and incisive.
It was that attacking play in particular that stood out early doors with seemingly an emphasis on keeping hold of possession rather than kicking on the edges as had been a bit of a theme last year, while the offloading game was a lot more deliberate with players looking to get their arms free for teammates running smart support lines.
The first Blue & Blacks try was a work-of-art with 30 players getting hands on the ball as the play was worked up from midfield into the 22, Javan Sebastian carried strongly on debut and then Ben Thomas hit the line at speed to cut through the opposition defence and touch down for the first try of the season.
This was followed by a similarly well-worked score on the back of a pre-planned second phase box kick from a midfield lineout that Josh Adams snaffled out of the sky. Play went towards the right wing and then switched back to the left where Adams popped up once again to give the final pass for Cam Winnett to slide over.
Callum Sheedy nailed both tricky conversions on the way to kicking four-out-of-five off the tee, a much improved showing from the fly-half which is hopefully a sign of things to come. The Leigh Halfpenny effect, possibly…
Unfortunately the game was derailed from a Cardiff point-of-view by an eventual red card shown to Ben Thomas after a TMO review. The centre performed a ruck clean close to the Lions try line and unquestionably made contact to the head of the opposition scrum-half with his shoulder, albeit that opposing man is now nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award after his reaction.
The question mark around this incident, and indeed for rugby in general, is what does it want to ask players to do to avoid head contact? The South African man dives on top of the breakdown, entering from the side and never supporting his body weight in an attempt to kill the ball. The only way Thomas can move him is to come in low as he did and risk head contact or to croc roll him, also illegal of course.
Should he instead do nothing and stand and wait in the (pretty vague in the URC) hope that the referee penalises the defender? Can we expect players to have that presence of mind in the split second decisions that precede these incidents? It’s too big of a question to answer now but it continues to be an issue within the game.
20 minutes with a man down gave the Lions a major advantage but the Blue & Blacks battled hard during this middle part of the game. Cam Winnett and Harri Millard both made try saving interventions as the defence continued to be intense and physical, restricting the away side to a six-point lead by the time Jacob Beetham’s introduction returned Cardiff to a full complement of players.
Followed up by some well-times substitutions from Corniel Van Zyl in his first game as Interim Head Coach, a refreshed home side gained an upper hand at the scrum and maul, as well as continuing to play brave attacking rugby despite the worsening weather conditions, to score a further three tries and wrap up the bonus point win.
Cardiff were the better side on the night and deserved the win, no question about it. The red card, along with a few individual errors, made hard work of it, but in a week of disruption at the end of another summer of uncertainty it is a credit to the players that they got out on the field, showcased a lot of positives and secured the five league points.
Next week sees a trip to Munster on the cards and improvements will be required to get a result. The aerial game will need to be better in order to improve territory stats, and discipline will have to improve against a side more likely to punish the Blue & Blacks than the Lions were.
It may be that Van Zyl and the coaching staff choose to rotate a few players with three big games to follow, especially with the possibility that Liam Belcher and Ben Thomas miss the trip through injury and suspension, respectively, but either way a positive performance is required to retain momentum even if a result becomes secondary.
Cardiff Rugby Life 