A frustrated Callum Sheedy insists Cardiff must become more accurate and more disciplined to turn narrow defeats into wins.
The Blue & Blacks trailed 19-0 in Galway before launching a fightback and levelling the scores through tries from Rey Lee-Lo, Ben Donnell and Callum Braley.
They could easily have gone on to win the BKT United Rugby Championship fixture but made mistakes at key moments as Connacht reclaimed the advantage to win.
The Blue & Blacks fought to the death and should have been awarded a penalty at the last phase but the full-time whistle was blown before the TMO intervened.
It left Cardiff frustrated but Sheedy insists his side must control the controllables and that means improving accuracy and discipline.
He said: “It’s a bit frustrating. I think first half especially, we were quite inaccurate in what we did. To give a side like Connacht a 19 point head start, it’s always going to be difficult to get back into the game.
“It was a great fight to go back to 19-all but inevitably, discipline and inaccuracies let us down again.
“We went for a walk this morning and we said the same – it’s going to be quite a still day, but, that’s probably some of the worst (conditions) we’ve played in this season. But it’s the same on both sides. They scored two tries against wind, we scored nine. So I guess they handled it better than we did.
“I don’t that’s in doubt, like we know we’ve got fight, we know we’ll battle for everything, but it’s probably at the stage now where we can’t just accept getting a good losing bonus point or being close in games.
“You’ve got to show fight and turn those close games into wins. So the fight will always be incredible in this group, because they’re a great group of boys. It’s just how we’re a bit more accurate, to turn those good fights into wins.
“It is frustrating, but we probably shouldn’t let it get to that (final phases). So we have to control what we can control. It’s quite easy to look outside of what we control – this could have happened, this didn’t happen, but we need to be better, simple as that. We can be better.”
The defeat in Galway saw Matt Sherratt’s side fall to sixth in the URC table and they face Leinster on the road next, before hosting Emirates Lions next month.