John Mulvihill insists Cardiff Blues must learn their lessons and perform for the full 80-minutes in order to stand a chance of victory over Glasgow Warriors on Saturday.
Wales’ Capital Region have suffered three defeats to the Scottish outfit this season, including a 29-12 loss at Cardiff Arms Park in the Heineken Champions Cup in October.
Mulvihill has also emphasised the importance of discipline for his side, as they look to gain an upper hand in the fight for a place in the quarter-finals.
“They’re a really good team with great strength-in-depth. They’ll be missing a few players but they’ll get four or five international players back, who haven’t played much in the Six Nations, so we expect a pretty red-hot side this weekend,” said the head coach.
“We were probably a little bit flattered against them at home in the Heineken Champions Cup.
“We won the second half, but if you let a team like that get in front early, they’ll be hard to peg back.
“An interesting stat is that we concede an average of 19-points per game against us, but against Glasgow we’ve averaged 34-points.
“We’ve had positive second halves against them each time, but it’s important that we focus on our start.
“We know that they move the ball well but also have a big, strong scrum and maul, so if our discipline isn’t good, then we will be punished.
“We gave away the first six penalties after half time in our last meeting, and that led to a maul try and another close range try.
“We got back to 28-24, but didn’t quite handle the restart and that led to more points for Glasgow. We have a plan to get there this time, but we need to stick to it for the whole 80 minutes this week.
“When you look at Munster and Glasgow, they’re clearly the top two teams in the Conference at the moment, and then you have us, Ospreys, Connacht and Cheetahs.
“That’s four teams realistically fighting out for one position. We have seven games to go, and we all have tough runs where we face each other, but luckily for us we have more home games than away in the run-in.”
Mulvihill has been boosted by the return of Wales trio Jarrod Evans, Seb Davies and Josh Turnbull.
The head coach is delighted to welcome the three back into the fold, and says they will be important for his side’s chances in the crunch clash.
Mulvihill said: “We’ll have Jarrod, Josh and Seb back in tomorrow for the captain’s run. They’ve had a pretty tough week so we won’t do too much, but we’ll go through our attacking shape and the small things we’ll be doing differently in defence.
“They will all start. They’re three of our best players so we need them starting and playing long periods in this game.
“Hopefully we can do enough to get a final win against these guys from Glasgow.”