By Craig Muncey
October 18 2015

Watched the match yesterday, and after some great attacking play and scoring 3 tries, Cardiff Blues came away on the end of a loss.   Here are my thoughts on the performance and things I feel they did well and things to work on.

Areas Of Improvement

That was the best Cardiff Blues performance I have seen in quite a while in terms of attacking intent and taking opportunities against a decent side.  The Tavis Knoyle try was outstanding, great passes from Patchell, whose distribution all day was outstanding, good awareness from Garyn Smith and a great support line from Knoyle.

The forwards carried strongly to give the structure for the backs, Josh Turnbull made a couple of great breaks through the middle and was well supported.

Cardiff Blues with ball in hand looked dangerous from all areas of the field, I also thought there was a real eagerness and committment from the players to make tackles and support each other, which was great to see.  Some of the defence on our own line was outstanding at times, there was great communication between the players which you could pick up during the match.

Some players who have been criticised on the terraces I thought yesterday put in some good performances, Lou Reed put in a good shift, amde his tackles and also carried a few times, he can be too upright in contact at times, but showed a willingness to carry.  Sam Hobbs had a great battle with BJ Botha, and in the first half, Botha was pinged a few times in the scrum, and I thought Craig Mitchell had one of his best games in a Cardiff Blues shirt so far, did well in the scrum and in defence made a number of important tackles, and had an excellent game overall.

Areas To Work On

As mentioned above, I thought Rhys Patchell had an outstanding game and dictated things throughout, however, in the first half, he missed two attempts at goal with kicks that he will feel he should of made, so when we were in top going into the break, we left six points out on the field, against Munster cannot afford to do that.

Also I have said about the committment in defence, however, one of the Munster tries should of been avoided when a Munster player went in between Gavin Evans and Matthew Rees to go under the posts and a second try was from a driving maul, where we just did not react quick enough and set up to defend.

You could see was a big difference in the strength of the benches as the game got down to last 20 minutes, but no doubt the Cardiff Blues playing squad will strengthen once a few injured players return, plus players coming back from the World Cup.

Touching on the bench some of the substitutions did surprise me, appreciate some of the players were running out of gas, and maybe there was injuries that I am not aware of, however the removal of Ellis Jenkins and Gavin Evans weakened us significantly.  Jenkins was as usual winning his fair share of turnovers and being a general nuisance at the breakdown, when he came off for Jevon Groves, Munster started getting quicker ball and started to make inroads.  The other substitution of Gavin Evans I thought was even more of a problem to the team.  If Evans had to come off, then I would not have brought on Gareth Davies.  Bringing Davies on, meant they pushed Patchell out to 12, who has having a stormer at first receiver.  Should of in my opinion, left Patchell at 10, brought Garyn Smith from the wing into 12, to replace Evans and put Harry Davies onto the wing.  Found it very surprising that in the starting line up, Cardiff Blues had 4 recognised centres starting, in Garyn and Richard Smith, Gavin Evans and Tom Isaacs, yet when we take one off, we play an outside half at centre.  Guessing they felt in the game balanced as it was, that bringing on an inexperienced player like Harry Davies at that stage was a big risk, but in my opinion would still have been the right call.

Overall, I thought the performance was really positive, there is no doubt I have more hope already this season than last season, there seems an energy and a desire to do well at the club that was not there last season.  When all players are available to Danny Wilson, he has some selectional decisions to make, which can only be a good thing, so will be interesting to see those decisions and how he manages players game times.

Positive signs, keep it up Cardiff Blues!