Harri Millard insists his side can learn from mistakes made during Cardiff Blues Premiership Select's 7-31 defeat to Bristol in the British and Irish Cup opener at Sardis Road earlier today.
The Blues conceded four first half tries at Pontypridd, but managed to limit the visitors to a single second half score before Dale Stuckey’s last minute interception put Justin Burnell’s side on the scoreboard.
Millard, who partnered Will Rees-Hole in midfield, believes his side showed signs of their potential against Bristol, and insists they can become a threat if they manage to cut out the costly errors made during the game in Pontypridd.
“Looking at the scoreboard at the end of the game, it’s a tough loss to take. I thought we played well at times, but small errors opened the game up for them to capitalise and score on the break a couple of times, and it becomes tough to play against that type of game,” said Millard.
“Of course, Bristol are a quality outfit, and as a group we’ve only been able to train twice before coming out here today to play.
“As a team we’ve got another opportunity next week in Leinster to show what we can do and try to cut those mistakes that perhaps cost us the game this week.
“Going into next week’s game, that try at the end can give us a bit of momentum as we made sure we point on the board. It's going to make us hungry to look to play and look for more tries next week.
“At half time, the messages that came across was to make sure we cut out the missed tackles across the park and try to play a bit more.
“We spent a lot of the first half putting in a defensive shift, and you can’t expect to be able to do that throughout the full 80. We wanted to keep the ball during the second half and use our attacking threat.
“We’ll go to Ireland next week and give a huge effort and see where that takes us. Once again, we know that we can go out there and play good rugby, and that’s what we’ll look to do.
“We’ll have a few more training sessions this week, and would’ve learnt a lot about each other and about us as a unit during today’s game so we’ll look forward to making the trip over to Dublin next week.”