Bruised after their battering at the Aviva Stadium, Scarlets fielded 10 internationals in a strong side aiming to secure a home Play off spot, with Leigh Halfpenny moving to full-back and Rhys Patchell returning to fly-half.
The Dragons returned to Welsh soil after back to back games away in Italy and their squad with an average age of 22, was unable to claim victory despite another fine try from Jared Rosser after his Zebre hat trick last time out.
"At half time we felt comfortable at 7-3 even though we defended for long periods we felt we were defending well and they had a lot of attacking opportunities in our 22 but we had kept them out bar once," said Jackman.
"The Scarlets were able to get at us at scrum time and that led to a yellow card. Once they got two tries in quick succession whilst we only had 14 it was difficult. The Scarlets are a very good side and we admire and congratulate them and they were the better team by far.
"We had a lot of young players again, two debutants playing together in a match of that magnitude against a team of internationals and at the end we were still attacking which showed our bravery and courage.
“The games we’ve had over the last four or five weeks have been good for continuing to give opportunities to players.
"International rugby is a really good barometer of quality, experience and talent and we didn’t have a lot of caps out there today, but I hope some of those youngsters who were making their debut this year go on to play for Wales like Elliot and Leon have done this year.
"I’m excited about the development we’ve done this year and how that’s going to add to our squad depth when we get players back from injury.
"There's players who haven’t featured a lot like Leon (Brown) and Brok (Harris) and players that haven’t featured at all like (Nic) Cudd and Tavis Knoyle and other key guys like Tyler Morgan and Jack Dixon, and of course Cory Hill who pulled out this week which was unfortunate, but that gave Elliot a chance to captain the team and I think he did that really well.
"If you want to go from worst to first, you have got to do things a bit drastically. Part of that was to develop our squad depth and we’ve done that by giving so many youngsters opportunity, that was the 22nd player this season to make his Pro14 debut for us today.
"We had to be bold and we were, we’ve tapped in to the local lads and given them exposure which will stand for them over time. It takes 10 games to get comfortable at the next level up and if you look at someone like Jared Rosser he’s a perfect example of that, he’s had a big run of games and over the last three games we’ve seen some real ability
"There are very few guys that can come in and be at a level at the first game because it’s a massive step up particularly at an occasion like today, so we’ve had the pain of developing those players at the same time
"The big thing now for us is to get our core block of players out the physio room back on the field, and then there are the recruits.
"Suddenly then you have a different squad profile, then we have to make sure we gel together well and we coach them well and develop our culture and there’s a different scenario.
"I like working with people who are enthusiastic and hungry for success, passionate about where they are from and we're starting to create an identity.
"It was never going to be ready in a year we were a bit behind starting off then some many injuries we’ve not even had the experience of last year. So see the big picture and see if we want to catch up it’s going to be built around developing people and developing talented players and we’re starting to do that much better. We are going to create our own internationals.
"We’ll have a much more balanced squad next year and we’ll kick on."
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