Head Coach Filo Tiatia spoke of his belief in the ‘DNA’ of a young group at Dragons RFC as the Men of Gwent battled in defeat to DHL Stormers in the BKT United Rugby Championship in Cape Town.
Aaron Wainwright and Dane Blacker grabbed tries as Tiatia’s men trailed 29-12 going into the final ten minutes in South Africa before a late flurry of home scores.
The challenge only continues for Dragons in Africa as they next face a Vodacom Bulls side in Pretoria with top two aspirations.
But Tiatia was keen to highlight the performance of a number of young Dragons on a fay when they were missing 18 players and also lost experienced prop Rhodri Jones just before kick-off.
“We have one game to focus on and the group we have will keep working hard,” he said.
“You can see we need to keep working on our set piece, our transitional work when we turn ball over. They scored three tries from that. A lot of our young guys have got to keep learning.
“I am excited about the DNA of the group. The DNA of a Gwent man is evident with a lot of our young guys.
“When I used to play against the Dragons, you always knew you would be in scrap. We want to make sure that doesn’t go away.
“We had some unfortunate injuries during the game so we had to find solutions around who would come on, certainly we had a few more than we had anticipated,” he added.
“We took off skip (Ben Carter) just to make sure we have some legs for next week when we play a very good Bulls team. We’ve seen the result against Cardiff.
“There are a lot of young guys in our group who came on. I was happy around some of their performances, and it kept us in the game.
“We have a lot of young guys getting opportunities who are not quite ready yet, but that is where we are at, and they can keep growing. “We have one more game, we stay tight, and we must face a very good Bulls team.”
Back row Dan Lydiate was forced off in the first half on his 150th league appearance and Tiatia remains optimistic that the former Wales international could yet make one more appearance before retirement.
“I am hopeful over Dan and that he is potentially available for the last game against the Bulls,” said the Head Coach.
“He has been a great servant for Wales, a great servant for Ospreys, a great servant for Dragons. A British Lion who had a neck injury that could have taken his young career away.
“He has always fought hard; he is a resilient in terms of his work ethic to get back and stay in it. Hopefully today is not his last game.”
Reflecting on the game, Tiatia admitted the firepower from Stormers had told in the final stages.
“Stormers are a side that play free and are very dangerous from anywhere,” he concluded.
“They have athletes across the park, players on the paint, they like to use the ball and kick the ball, contest the aerial game, and they play off scraps. It is hard to contain that unstructured chaos and contain them.
“We managed to do that at times, but they are a very dangerous team.”
I am excited about the DNA of the group. The DNA of a Gwent man is evident with a lot of our young guys...
