Josh Turnbull has urged Cardiff to right the wrongs of Johannesburg to salvage something from their two-game stint in South Africa against the DHL Stormers on Sunday (KO 12.00pm GMT).
The Blue and Blacks were left bitterly disappointed after a slow start at Ellis Park proved costly against the Emirates Lions.
They did stage a comeback with tries from Aled Summerhill and James Botham but key decisions went against them as they pressed in the final quarter.
Having seen an earlier try ruled out by TMO Ben Whitehouse, Cardiff were within a score when Kristian Dacey was sin-binned for an entirely unfortunate and accidental contact with a head. That let the Lions off the hook and they then scored in fortuitous fashion with the final play.
It left Cardiff empty-handed when they had been wrestling for the lead, or at the very least a losing bonus-point, and Turnbull is acutely aware of the need to take as much as possible from the Stormers.
He said: “It’s obviously disappointing and quite tough to take. I thought we were starting to get back in the game but to get that yellow card was pretty harsh.
“The TMO has called them in and it’s tough because they are all game changing incidents and it’s hard to take.
“We were on top of them in that moment and probably coming back into it - it’s pretty disappointing, it turned the game and allowed them to exit well.
“Ultimately, we were disjointed in the first half, we gave them too much possession, ill-discipline cost us and kept them in the game.
“That’s the difficult thing. We wanted to impose our game, we wanted to kick off and them to return the ball. When we did have the ball, put them under pressure and go through some phases we scored some decent tries.
“We were probably better in the second half than the first but we have to take the good from this week and press it hard next week. When you put that much effort in, you do want to come away with something and that’s the disappointment.
“These are the games in hand and by next week we will be back level with everyone else, or at least the teams around us, so we really have to work hard and come away with something next weekend.”
The Stormers warmed up for the encounter with a comfortable 55-7 victory over Zebre Parma and present a formidable challenge in Cape Town but Turnbull knows his side have no time to dwell on what could have been as the fixtures, in a congested second-half of the season, come thick and fast.
Following Sunday’s showdown at DHL Stadium, the Blue and Blacks jet back to face Glasgow Warriors in Cardiff before a hat-trick of Welsh derbies.
He added: “They’ve had a good win against Zebre and for me we really have to work on the positives from this game and really take it into next week.
“There’s always going to be individual and collective issues we need to clear up and get right but they are only small minor things and once we click we’ll be clicking.
“It’s about getting a bit of momentum again. It’s taken a little bit longer than expected since the game against Ulster, which was our first game in five or six weeks . We have to start building momentum now because we have a long period of games.”