Dai Young says Cardiff were made to pay for their failure to deal with sin-binning periods after suffering a 52-24 defeat to Glasgow Warriors on Friday.
The hosts scored four of their eight tries while the Blue and Blacks were reduced to 14 men, with Thomas Young and Uilisi Halaholo both spending 10 minutes each in the sin bin.
After a bright start in Scotstoun, where Cardiff took the lead courtesy of a Josh Adams try, the momentum of the game shifted following Young’s sin-binning, leading to a trio of quickfire scores from the hosts.
The Director of Rugby was disappointed with how the yellow cards allowed Glasgow to take control of the encounter, and says it’s vitally important that his side learn the lessons from the defeat.
Young said: “It’s disappointing obviously and the scoreboard is quite ugly when you look at it at the end.
“But I thought we had a really good start. We got our noses in front and we were right in the game.
“Then we had a pretty harsh yellow card against Thomas [Young], but that happens on occasions.
“We certainly didn’t control that 10 minutes the way we wanted to. They scored three tries and 21 points in that period which obviously meant we’d be chasing the game a little bit.
“Another yellow card in the second half, and they scored another try so that’s four tries following yellow cards.
“That’s a big thing that we need to get better at - controlling those periods when we’re down to 14. It will inevitably happen in this game.
“I thought a couple of calls went against us but as the game went on we also controlled the collisions poorly. They started again on top, winning collisions, and once that starts to happen then they’ll get speed of ball and it becomes very hard for us to control them defensively.
“We played good stuff on occasions and left points out there but we’re obviously disappointed to lose by that much.
“We’ve got to learn a lot from it, but ultimately the story of the day was the yellow cards and how we dealt with those periods because they will happen. It doesn’t matter how you play the game, there will be yellow cards.”
Following tries from Adams, Kristian Dacey and Liam Belcher, Cardiff’s hopes of leaving Glasgow with a bonus point were alive in the final 10 minutes, but ultimately left empty handed.
Young called for more composure in the final stages and insists his side must continue to work hard on the training ground as they seek improvements.
The former Wales prop added: “We had opportunities for the bonus point but we were rushing it. We had 10 minutes to score a try but were flapping at it a little bit.
“As I said, we’ve got to try and take the positives out of tonight. The scoreboard is ugly, nobody wants to see that, but there were positives, things we can improve on and things we can do better.
“When we get opportunities we’ve got to be more clinical and got to keep working on our physicality, which is something we knew coming into the season.
“It’s something we struggled with on occasions last season against the better teams, and did win it from parts of the game today, but by the second half we started to lose more and more collisions which meant they controlled the speed of ball.
“They’re too good of a team to be given quick ball.
“You’ll win rugby games and you’ll lose some. We’re not happy with tonight’s performance but what we’ve got to look at is trying to improve every week.
“We will come up against good teams, and tonight that was nigh-on an international team we played against. You don’t get much tougher than that.
“We need to take the positive, build on them and try to take the negatives out of our game.
“Next week is another game where we’re at home. We want to keep building.
“This season is going to go where we’ll win some games and lose some games but our focus can’t change.
“Our focus has to be to build on the things we do well and keep working on things that don’t go well. Hopefully, by doing that, we’ll win more than we lose.”