John Mulvihill was pleased with how his young players stepped up during Sunday’s Guinness PRO14 defeat to defending champions Leinster at RDS Arena.
There were plenty of narratives when the Cardiff Blues squad was announced, with Tomos Williams making a return from injury, Alun Lawrence making his first Guinness PRO14 start and young duo Iestyn Harris and Gwilym Bradley in line for debuts from the bench.
There was also a stand-out performance from skipper Josh Turnbull, with early stats suggesting the utility forward got through 36 tackles in a mammoth defensive effort.
While Mulvihill praised a number of individual performances, he’s called on them to back those performances and carry the momentum into the next few weeks.
“It was great to see Tomos back tonight. We haven’t seen a lot of him, as he got injured against Scarlets back in August when we restarted,” said the head coach.
“So it was great to have him around the group for the last week or so, and he showed his quality tonight.
“We got him through to 65 minutes tonight and then Jamie Hill came on and I thought both of them played well.
“Tomos is a great competitor, and that’s the type of player we need at the club at the moment.
“He worked really well with Jason Tovey, who I thought had a good game tonight.
“Ben Thomas also stood up in the 12 position and was a real livewire with the ball. I’m looking forward to seeing what he can bring for us over the next couple of weeks.
“He brought a bit of physicality and stood up defensively. He’s also deceptively quite quick and he used his foot-speed to get on the outside of defenders tonight and put other people away.
“Again that’s something we want to see more from him this season as we go forward.
“Alun got through a lot of work in his first start and I thought he did really well.
“We have a bit of strength in depth in that back row position and we need it, because we have a lot of players out or representing their country at the moment.
“Gwilym Bradley put his hand up for selection again this week and Teddy Williams was only in his second game. To see Iestyn Harries come through and play the good minutes that he did today was absolutely fantastic. He had some good collisions in him tonight and we’re looking forward to seeing what he can bring over the next few weeks.
“Josh Turnbull is a consummate professional and is massive for us. You see how hard he works during a game, but he backs that up during the week. He’s was a warrior for us tonight and is someone who kept us in the fight for a long period of time tonight.”
A long evening seemed to be in store for Wales’ Capital Region when they found themselves 14 points behind after 14 minutes. However, a gritty and gutsy performance and an Aled Summerhill try meant they remained in the contest.
However a late flurry of tries saw Leinster running away with their seventh consecutive bonus point win, maintaining a perfect start to the season.
Mulvihill was proud of certain aspects of his side’s performance but insists they must find ways of increasing pressure on the opposition.
The Australian added: “I think we deserved a lot more than that. After 62 minutes the score was still 19-5 but we let ourselves down in the first and last minutes of the first half.
“We gave them a few easy points there but, apart from that, up to 62 minutes we were still in the game and were sniffing a possible bonus point at that stage.
“Unfortunately, if you give a team like Leinster so much possession of the ball at the wrong end of the pitch they will eventually grind you down.
“The message at half time was that we needed to work a little bit harder around the breakdown and get a bit more width in our defensive line.
“We did that, and the message to our front five was that we needed to work harder at scrum time and defence to allow that pressure to be transferred onto Leinster.
“For 25 minutes after the break, we did that, but we were running on fumes at this level at the moment and you saw Leinster’s strength in depth come through tonight.
“We started the second half really brightly, with two nice line breaks, but again we compounded the line break with a turnover.
“We had around 14 turnovers or penalties in the second half, which means you don’t put pressure on the opposition and you don’t put pressure on the referee to make decisions at your end.”