Head Coach Dai Flanagan admitted his Dragons had lost momentum after a dream start as they opened the new BKT United Rugby Championship season with a narrow 22-17 defeat to Edinburgh.
The Men of Gwent stormed out of the blocks and raced into a 14-0 lead inside 16 minutes courtesy of tries from Sio Tomkinson and newcomer Corey Baldwin.
But Edinburgh gradually worked their way back into the game and a shift in momentum – and high penalty count – allowed Ben Healy to kick the Scots to opening day success.
“I am gutted, the second quarter was when we lost it,” said Flanagan.
“We lost momentum and lost the ref with our decisions and ill-discipline.
“We lost the momentum and he was refereeing one team then, and rightly so because we didn’t pull it back.
“We gave away 20 penalties – you would win at any level, let alone URC with that, especially with a kicker like Ben Healy in the opposition.
“We can’t concede so many penalties off a maul or scrum, giving them easy outs. Sometimes you have to be whiter than white and take your medicine so that they kick the ball and you can go back at them. We didn’t do that.”
“We can’t overreact,” added Flanagan. “We know that it’s our biggest work-on, we spoke about it all summer and we were pleased in pre-season when we managed to win the games at the death (against the Ospreys and Scarlets).
“This is another step up, this actually counts and that’s the disappointing thing. Sometimes you’d rather turn up and get hammered and have loads to work on instead of fine-tuning.
“It’s derby week now and we need to look hard at ourselves because we can’t repeat this.”
I am gutted, the second quarter was when we lost it... We lost momentum and lost the ref with our decisions and ill-discipline.
