Matt Sherratt was disappointed not to take more from a spirited performance against a star-studded Hollywoodbets Sharks side at Cardiff Arms Park. 

The Blue & Blacks had won their three previous encounters against the Durban-based outfit but were up against a side boasting 13 Springboks on Saturday evening.

They bagged the game’s opening try thanks to Alex Mann but the Sharks soon took control thanks to Jurenzo Julius and double World Cup winners Bongi Mbonambi and Makazole Mapimpi.

Cardiff, missing some 19 players through injury and international call-ups, battled bravely and bagged tries through a Tom Bowen brace and Gabriel Hamer-Webb, who bagged the bonus-point but the Sharks pulled away in the closing stages. 

The Cardiff head coach said: “Obviously we’re disappointed with how it ended.  Tom Bowen’s try that brought us within two scores was massive. I think you could see then, they were taking a long time to get back for the kick off and I felt that they were tiring a little bit. 

“Eight minutes away from the end and it was a six point game. I felt if we could have got some field position – you could see every time we got past two or three phases we looked pretty dangerous with the ball tonight. 

“But they’re a team that are always going to have moments and unfortunately they just had a moment around 72 minutes and it took the wind out of us a little bit. 

“The last seven minutes were pretty disappointing but they’re a quality outfit. Results don’t show how much quality they’ve got, but if you look at the team sheet, obviously they’ve got some big guns missing as well, but there’s double World Cup winners coming off the bench. 

“The two and the one are World Cup winners. They’ve got obviously Mapimpi, Lukhanyo Am at 13. They’re a rock star team so it was always gonna be tough because they’ve got so many individuals who can do something in the flash. That’s probably what happened in the last six or seven minutes really. 

“So we’re disappointed. I thought two points at least is what we could have got from the game in that last six minutes. But as I said, they’re a quality, quality team. We probably just had a little bit too much pace and power for us in the last part of the game.

“But we’re getting better. At the start the season, if you’d have said, at the end of January going into the Six Nations and we were fifth, I’d have snatched your hand off. 

“So I think we’re traveling in the right direction. We’ve picked more points up. We’ve got 18 points out of 25 in the derbies, beat a decent Ulster side here, turned the draw from last season into a bonus point win against Zebre.”

Despite the defeat, there were plenty of positives in a highly entertaining encounter in front of  11,687 crowd.

One was undoubtedly the continued form of 18-year-old Tom Bowen, who bagged a brace on his URC debut.

Sherratt added: “I thought he was very good. He’s hard to handle on that pitch as well. He changes direction so quickly. 

“He’s been a real find really this block. You forget how young he is, I think he’s played four games for us now and he’s very low maintenance, gets on with the week.

“The biggest positive for Tom is he’s kept playing like he played his age-grade rugby. He backs himself, he’s got no fear and he’s just showed all the traits that we wanted to bring him back to the club for. You can see if he gets ball in space he’s very dangerous. 

“We’re lucky here obviously to have I like to Mason Theo, Josh Adams, Iwan Stevens, Gabe I thought played very well again today, obviously Regan Grace, we’ve got some exciting

wingers here, so he’s in a long line of those.”