Tiatia: We are excited to get the season going

Head Coach Filo Tiatia admits Dragons are eager ‘to get the season going’ as they prepare to jet to Italy for the league opener.

The Men of Gwent have warmed up for the new campaign with big victories over Hartpury and Scarlets as the squad looked to gain valuable match minutes.

The focus is now firmly on Round 1 of the BKT United Rugby Championship against Benetton in Italy on Friday night (kick-off 7.45pm).

And Tiatia believes his team is ready to get stuck into another league campaign and fully aware of the expectations around progress and development.

“First game up, both teams are excited to get the season going. We’re looking forward to it,” he stated.

“We have expectations around what we want to achieve as a group, and we want to shift from where we have been on the ladder. We want to go up.

“We have got to be in the scrap to be top eight and we need to get things right in our game and model.

“The aspirations are aligned around what we can control. We know if we create moments and apply pressure we can get points. We do that well then we are in games.

“We are committed to climbing the ladder and fully focussed on Benetton.

“We have a lot of home games with Scarlets first up, so that will be personal for a lot of players both sides. Then we have the Ospreys and it carries on from there.

“But we focus on the here and now, keep our feet nice and planted on the ground, and we know we are going to have scrap with these guys.”

Reflecting on pre-season, Tiatia added: “There has been some good growth in pre-season with some of our young guys that are developing here and are homegrown.

“When you see the team when it gets named, you will see we have given opportunity to players who have earned the opportunity to put the jersey on.

“There are some injuries, a lot of those players are not too far in terms of return to play, which is encouraging, but we have got to keep growing the group.”