Matt Sherratt was left frustrated by Cardiff’s New Year’s Day derby draw with the Ospreys.

The Blue & Blacks made a flying start at a sold out Cardiff Arms Park, with Evan Lloyd claiming an early try from a driving maul. 

However, in a error-strewn derby, interjected by indiscipline, the game never really got going and Cardiff had to battle to salvage a draw.

Sherratt said: “It’s a bit of a difficult one . If I’m honest, I think it was a couple of points dropped, obviously them going down to 14. We evened that up with the penalty count and, losing two players in the second half. 

“So I’m a little bit disappointed. It’s a hard one to really put my finger on. I thought we started well, we’ve not started well in the last four or five games. 

“Obviously 15-0 down last week, 21 against Ulster and it’s kind of shocked us into a better performance second half, and it was probably the opposite today. 

“So we had a really good, fast start put a lot of emphasis on trying to win the kicking battle and the breakdown and we did that first 10 minutes but then because of the penalty count the game just kind of meandered from set piece to set piece and that’s not what we wanted. 

“I just think if we’d have put three, four, five structured phases together there would have been gaps but we just didn’t give ourselves the opportunity to do it.

“There seemed to be quite long periods of inactivity and reset scrums and line-outs and people going down on the floor and it just kind of ran away from us in the second half.

“I was really confident that if we put anything that resembled our best game on the field in the second half we could have got a bonus point win and that’s not being disrespectful to the Ospreys but we just couldn’t get enough on the field.

“There were 27-28 penalties in the game, the average is 19. That kind of ruins the spectacle. I don’t think it was the referee’s fault either, it was probably two teams trying a little bit too hard and getting on the wrong said.

“These derbies are all going to be close. You’ve got four teams, all with a very similar budget, similar squad sizes. It’s going to be little moments that’s going to decide all the derbies. 

“We sneaked a win last week, against he Dragons. Today’s a draw, so I think that’s going to be the nature of the derbies really. But I think overall, to be positive, we’ve had a good start to the season, the club’s in a good spot. 

“So I’ve probably got to just temper a bit of disappointment for today with where we are big picture really.”