Full back Cai Evans has called on Dragons to play with intent as they prepare for a double-header with South African juggernauts in the coming weeks.
The Men of Gwent have jetted off to Africa to face HollywoodBets Sharks and Emirates Lions over two weekends in the BKT United Rugby Championship.
First up for Dai Flanagan’s men are the Sharks in Durban – a side yet to taste victory this season in the league.
However, Evans is only too aware of the size of the task this Saturday at HollywoodBets Kings Park and how playing with intent will be crucial to any success.
“We’ve got to build on the performance against Ospreys in South Africa,” he said.
“We’ve got to stay tight as a group, learn about things that we can improve on but also give each other a pat on the back in the areas where we dominated.
“We know we’ve got to be more efficient because we played against 14 men and won’t have that many chances again, but we also need to show our intent to play - we can’t just let the South African teams come at us.
“If we are being hyper-critical (of the Ospreys victory) we had a lot of entries into their 22 and we didn’t capitalise on them,” he added.
“In an ideal world you would like to come out of them with more points, but our general foundations were there on display.
“We came with the intent to play with multi-phase rugby and to express ourselves. We wanted to win races and work hard for each other, which we demonstrated.
“That win means a huge amount after a narrow loss and one that got away against Edinburgh in the first game then disappointing results against Cardiff, Munster, and Leinster.
“Hopefully we have absorbed that winning feeling and take that forward into our next games.”
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We also need to show our intent to play - we can’t just let the South African teams come at us...
