John Mulvihill insists his side must maintain their intensity as they travel to Pau for a crucial Challenge Cup victory.
Cardiff Blues sealed a stunning bonus point victory over the Top 14 outfit at Cardiff Arms Park on Saturday, with Josh Adams crossing for a debut hat-trick as Wales’ Capital Region racked up eight tries on an unforgettable evening of rugby.
However, Mulvihill expects a different proposition when facing the French side in their own back yard, and expects them to field a strong side in preparation for their domestic clash against Stade Francais the following week.
The head coach said: “We’ve now won four out of our last five games. People from the outside might’ve thought that we weren’t going well but we’ve been picking up momentum and want to use that this week again.
“To win away in France is going to be tough, and they’ll pick a lot of their top team, with some of their All Blacks potentially involved as well.
“But if we get the points out of this game, it will set us up well to get out of our pool, and that was one of the goals we had at the start of the year.
“Pau need to gear themselves up for a big game against Stade Francais the following week. They’ll be away, and they need to win on the road to make sure they cement themselves in that mid-table of the Top 14.
“I would suspect that we might see close to a full strength team and boys like Ben Smith and Luke Whitelock will get some game-time to lead them into the following week.
“Obviously, our preparations should be fairly similar but French teams at home will always play a little bit different rugby.
“But if we come with the same intensity, we’ll hope to get a good result our there.
“The conditions have been pretty horrendous out there in recent weeks, with 40-odd miles per hour winds, and we played against Connacht last year in pretty similar conditions.
“We tried to mimic some of that in training this week, and tightened up a little bit, but you’ve got to keep your attacking intent, otherwise you don’t score points.
“We can take confidence from the fact that we like travelling and spending time together. We’ve had some success on the road this year and that’s something that we pride ourselves on.
“Last year, away wins were few and far between but this year it seems like we’ve got the balance right.”
Reflecting on the home win at the Arms Park on Saturday, Mulvihill was delighted to see his side play with attacking freedom and intent and believes they learnt their lesson from the Challenge Cup defeat to Leicester earlier in the campaign.
“There were times in the coaching box when we sat back with a smile and thought, ‘this is the way we want to play’.
“It seemed at times that the boys were playing with each other in the back yard, basically. It just seemed to work.
“We had a spark from Tomos [Williams] and Jarrod [Evans], the spark that Josh Adams brings to the group and I thought Owen Lane was really good this time around.
“The way Ben Thomas stepped up to play in-between Jarrod and Rey [Lee-Lo] really worked for us as well.
“We didn’t play a lot of rugby in the game against Leicester, but played far too much rugby in the wrong areas of the field, and over-played at the wrong time.
“We were a bit more subtle in what we did against Pau last week, and it worked out for us.”