John Mulvihill has warned his side to be wary of a backlash from Glasgow Warriors in the third round of Guinness PRO14 action.
Dave Rennie’s side have lost two from two so far in this campaign, kicking off with a heavy defeat to Toyota Cheetahs before being edged out by Scarlets at Scotstoun Stadium last week.
Meanwhile, Wales’ Capital Region began their season with a bonus point win over Isuzu Southern Kings at Port Elizabeth, but were defeated by Edinburgh at Cardiff Arms Park in their first home game of the campaign.
Having assessed his side in training this week, the head coach is confident his side can bounce back from last week’s disappointment but is aware of Glasgow’s strength in depth during international periods.
“We’re aware of the backlash, but hopefully we’ve come up with a plan to give them a zero to three start,” said the Australian.
“Glasgow are a really good team but they’ve struggled a little bit with some of their bigger players away.
“But with the strength of depth in their squad, they’re still able to call on international standard players to play this week.
“They play a really good brand of rugby, but probably caught Cheetahs on the opening weekend in red hot form after winning the Currie Cup in their first Guinness PRO14 game in front of home support.
“Scarlets physically fronted up in defence last weekend, but to their credit Glasgow clawed their way back in and probably should’ve won that game.
“They’re missing a lot of their front pack but the depth in their forwards is very good so the forwards they put out last week is probably as good as any team in the Championship.
“They’re used to having a lot of boys away in November and for the Six Nations, so a lot of their second tier players get a lot of rugby. We’ll be coming up against a battled-hardened team.
“For us, it was a pretty rough Monday morning, as we went through some areas that we need to improve on.
“We let ourselves down a little bit but we needed to get over that disappointment, and have had a pretty positive week.
“We’ve been working on our attacking shape and potentially pulling the trigger a little bit early, while on the other side of the ball we’ve looked at defending for a longer period of time under pressure and hopefully you’ll see the work we’ve done on Saturday.”
Mulvihill has also stressed the importance of taking each game at a time in the early stages of the campaign, as they look to maintain their form on the road.
The head coach added: “You can’t let the bigger teams get a jump on you, because you’ll always be playing catch-up and there’s a lot of pressure on your preparations every week.
“It’s about taking it one week at a time. It’s hard to stop looking further down the road but we need to make sure we focus on this weekend.
“We wanted to take the first three games one-by-one and then, in the week break, we can reassess what we need with a number of home games coming up.
“Three of our first four games are away but then we get the chance to play Munster and Cheetahs at home.
“We’ve got some big, form teams up early this season, and if you win more than half of those you’ll put yourself in good shape.”