Dai Young admits Cardiff will travel to Llanelli with a score to settle after suffering a double defeat to Scarlets last season.
The Blue and Blacks will be heading to Parc y Scarlets looking to bounce back after consecutive defeats in the BKT United Rugby Championship to Glasgow Warriors and Emirates Lions.
Young revealed the defeat to South African outfit Lions was particularly frustrating, having failed to capitalise on a dominant first half display, but insists that his outfit are now fully focused on the task ahead in Llanelli.
The Director of Rugby explained: “As coaches we can obviously work on the game-plan, we can work on the tactics in the game and be accountable for selection. But once they go across the whitewash, it’s over to them to perform at the levels that they want and feel they can perform at.
“So yes, we were very disappointed on Friday night, we had a good chat after the game and wanted to have a good week of training this week to go down there and try to do a job on the Scarlets.
“We felt they were far better than us on the two occasions we played them last year, and we probably have a bit of a score to settle.
“They will also be really eager to get their season going, so we know it’s going to be a tough, tough game and that’s what we were hoping the focus would be this week.
“Obviously a little bit of an edge has been taken off that due to other matters, so we have tried to address it when it’s needed to be addressed, while obviously trying to get back on page with the rugby.
“We’ve got to address our preparations with the rugby. We were disappointed with the performance on Friday because it was a game I felt we should’ve won.
“We were comfortable up until half time but didn’t get the scoreboard to be anywhere near as favourable as it should’ve been.
“Then in the second half, the basic errors and the penalty count, of which we thought some were harsh but others were penalties, meant we didn’t have the ball and we were under pressure.
“So I was disappointed in our performance, especially in the second half and the way we didn’t really win the game.”
Young also warned his side of Scarlets’ power up-front and knows Cardiff must be ready to match the Llanelli outfit at the set-piece.
He added: “We know the Scarlets will be dangerous enough in derbies and we all get up for these games. Sometimes form can go out of the window, but as we said last season, we really struggled to cope with their non-Welsh contingent up front.
“They over-powered us and that’s the first thing we’ve got to do is get parity up front because, as I just said, they were hugely prominent.
“We’re looking forward to a good performance on the weekend and to hopefully getting a result. I don’t think Friday was all doom-and-gloom. There were parts of it but Friday was more frustrating than anything else.”
