Blog Banner

Anscombe wants to welcome Cheetahs with hostile and electric CAP atmosphere

27th September 2018


Gareth Anscombe wants the Cardiff Arms Park crowd to create another hostile and electric atmosphere ahead of the Toyota Cheetahs' visit to the Welsh capital.

The Welsh international successfully converted 100 per cent of his kicks during last week's bonus point victory over Munster.

Anscombe says the Arms Park crowd can be the difference between winning and losing, and hopes the atmosphere from the opening two home fixtures will continue into Friday's encounter against the South African outfit.

"We want a strong crowd to make it pretty hostile and pretty electric for us," said Anscombe.

"When there’s big moments in games and the team get on the right side of those moments, the crowd will boost the energy when you’re a little drained and fatigued.

"You think back to the three of four minute period on our own try-line before [Kristian] Dacey got the turnover. Likewise, when we scored a couple of nice, opportunistic tries, it’s always nice to take a step back and take in the crowd supporting you. 

"Any Friday night game at home is always nice and I thought we had a decent crowd last week. Hopefully we’ll get a nice walk-up crowd with the weather like it’s been over the past couple of days.

"It was nice to hear them get into it last week, and we haven’t given them much to cheer about in the first few weeks.

"We owe them a couple of good performances and hopefully we can improve and deliver what we gave last week. Our challenge is to keep building and improving as a squad and we’ll get another opportunity tomorrow night to do that.

"They’re always very vocal, and like I said, we’ve probably disappointed them recently, but it was important that we stepped up for them.

"Tomorrow night it will be Friday night again, under the lights, it’s always a nice time to play and hopefully the last bit of sun we’ll be having, we will get that."

Anscombe also believes the Arms Park surface will invite both teams to play to their attacking instincts, and hopes it will give the hosts a slight edge on the night.

Anscombe said: "The pitch here is a point-of-difference and something we know teams don’t exactly enjoy playing on at times, but for us we love it.

"It supports the way we want to play the game especially if the weather is nice, which is not always the case, but hopefully tomorrow it will be.

"You never go out looking to score four tries, you just look to do the little things right and hopefully they will come. 

"I thought from an attacking point-of-view, we had improved last week, after a tough couple of weeks. We’ve identified a couple of areas we can go after the Cheetahs and hopefully we can deliver that to a high standard and if we do that hopefully we can get over the whitewash."

#PackCAP and play your part once again as Cardiff Blues go toe-to-toe against South African side, Toyota Cheetahs.