Head coach Matt Sherratt is targeting the knockout stages of the EPCR Challenge Cup as he plans to freshen up the team ahead of Saturday’s game against Perpignan.
The Blue and Blacks currently sit in third place in the pool, and a win in one of their final two matches will almost assure them of a place in the next round, however Sherratt will continue to use the competition as an opportunity to blood his young stars and squad players.
“Our objective from the competition, is trying to get a home game in the knockouts with the knockouts as a minimum, but then grow in the squad as well,” said Sherratt.
“We are going to freshen up a little bit and give some youngsters a chance, you’ve seen that with Tom (Bowen) and Steff (Emanuel).
“If there is a chance to give a youngster a go or someone who hasn’t had as much game time as they’d have liked to get, then we’ll use it for that as well.”
Sherratt is relishing the unique challenges and experiences playing across competitions and highlighted the diversity of playing styles and the distinctive atmosphere of matches in France.
“I enjoy this competition. I’ve actually never been to Perpignan, and talking to a lot of the squad, I don’t think it’s somewhere where a lot of players have played. It’s quite refreshing for me.
“One of the big benefits for me as a coach for the URC is you get so many different styles.
“You get the South African teams, especially away, completely different challenge to playing the one of the Irish teams, and the Scottish teams play very much in the style of the Scottish national team.
“You get a chance to play against a lot of different kind of playing styles in different environments.
“France is unique in terms of the experience. The pre-match, it’s almost a little bit of a carnival with a rugby match in the middle of it.
“It’s something I know the players look forward to and we’re always pleased when we get drawn away in France.”
Teams often ring the changes for the EPCR Challenge Cup, making it difficult to guess the opposition’s lineup. As a result, Sherratt has focused on Cardiff’s own game rather than the opposition more than usual.
“I think it’s always difficult to try and guess teams in this competition because you never know what selection’s going to be like.
“It will probably come down to that or at least getting six or seven points maybe out of the two games.
“We’re going to go over there, be really positive and try and get five points, that’s our approach.
“They’ve pretty structured in their attack in terms of their shape, but because you never know what the selection is like, if you look at their selections, they did make a lot of changes for the Cheetahs and Connacht games.
“They’ll probably be the same as us and make some changes, so we’ve decided to focus more on ourselves. Most weeks it’ll be probably an 80-20 split, but we’ve probably gone more 95-5 in terms of just trying to get our best game on the field.
New signing Regan Grace could feature for the Blue and Blacks in Perpignan, and it’s an exciting prosect says Sherratt.
“He’s fast and he’s an exciting player. Listen, he’s only going to have had three training sessions so he’s not going to know all of our calls and be massively up to speed with our game, but we don’t want to fill his head with too much.
“If we can get him the ball early in space he’s an exciting player so hopefully we get him some ball.”