Danny Wilson was pleased to sign off for the season at BT Sport Cardiff Arms Park with a win but admits the 30-24 victory over Zebre typifies Cardiff Blues' entire campaign.
The Blues dominated the first-half and lead 23-3 at half-time thanks to tries from Gareth Anscombe, who contributed a 20-point haul, and Aled Summerhill.
But they were dragged into a set-piece orientated second-half and never got going as Zebre fought back.
Man-of-the-match Tomos Williams crossed for their only score of the second-half and it proved enough to secure the victory but there will be plenty to improve on for next week’s clash with Newport Gwent Dragons.
Head coach Wilson said: “It’s a home win, which is the important thing.
“But we all saw a second half performance which was pretty disappointing. The pace was taken out of the game by them, they wanted to slow us down and stop us playing with speed of ball, and they succeeded to extent.
“It became a slowed down, set-piece slug-fest which is not the game we want to play against that opposition – we wanted to play a high-tempo game like in the first half.
“It doesn’t help when you have three guys in the bin during the game and are playing with 14-men.
“It sums up our season a bit – the good we can produce and the not so good. There’s plenty to work on but credit to the boys for the way they have played in the last five games.
“It’s a disappointing second-half but we will bounce back next week going into the Dragons.”
Cardiff Blues have already qualified for a play-off for the last spot in the European Champions Cup but face the Dragons in their last regular season encounter next Saturday.
The match has been switched to Caerphilly due to a fixture clash and Wilson expects to have a handful of players back available for the PRO12 finale.
But he was also quick to praise some of the young guns, who impressed against the Italian outfit.
He added: “We also need to develop more depth but the positive is we tonight exposed Aled Summerhill, Rhun Williams, Tomos Williams, Corey Domachowski all very young players from our academy.
“They got an experience tonight which was an important one and there were some good performances”
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