Jarrod Evans has called upon Cardiff to feed off the intensity and passion of the Arms Park crowd to get back to winning ways in the BKT United Rugby Championship.
The Blue and Blacks host Emirates Lions on Friday night (7.35pm) following a mixed start to the Championship season. They kicked-off with a thrilling victory over Munster before falling to a heavy defeat on the road to Glasgow Warriors.
The fly-half admits his side must learn to deal with adversity better in games but is also buoyed to return to the Arms Park, where the home side have won six of their last eight URC fixtures.
He said: “We have a big focus on trying to improve our away form and Glasgow is a tough place to go. I’m not sure but I think they lost maybe once or not at all at Scotstoun last year.
“But I thought we started well, we weathered the storm and kept the home crowd out of it. We took a good 7-0 lead but didn’t help ourselves with the cards. We didn’t deal with them or control the game when they happened and they scored 21 points. From there we struggled to get our momentum back.
“Again, we came out in the second-half again quite well and similar thing happened so it’s quite disappointing because I felt like we started the game pretty well.
“It’s hard to put your finger on anything in particular, but I think it’s just about trying to control those key moments. When one thing happens, we have just got to park it and move on. We can’t let it affect our game because it seems like at times when one thing happens that has an effect on the team.”
Looking ahead to this weekend’s fixture, he continued: “We know what South Africans have brought to this competition. But we’re at home and we would rather big focus on ourselves. We love coming to the Arms Park.
“Our home form is is pretty good. We’re all really excited to get into it Friday and right the wrongs from last Friday.
“The boys get real big buzz from the crowd here at at Arms Park. The intensity and the noise they make gives us a big lift throughout the game,
“Every game is an important one but our home games are definitely something we need to keep on top of as well as trying to obviously put our performances in and get our results away from home as well.”
Cardiff have bagged three tries on each of their previous encounters this season and were frustrated to leave Scotstoun empty-handed last weekend.
The back-line have created opportunities and Evans hopes that will only increase as the campaign progresses with the clinical edge to finish chances also sharpening.
He added: “It’s never gonna happen straight away, everything takes time. I feel like we got off to a pretty good start and Munster was a pretty good performance.
“We probably could have converted a lot more scores and we were close to getting a bonus point up in Scotland as well through four tries
“So I feel like when we’ve had our chances we’ve been pretty clinical, but I feel like we probably just need to create a little bit more of them and that will come with time and different combinations.”
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