Cardiff Blues coach Dai Young admitted his side were not at their best after surviving a scare against Edinburgh.
Blues boss wants side to step up a gear after surviving scare
Cardiff Blues coach Dai Young admitted his side were not at their best after surviving a scare against Edinburgh.
The home side had to overcome a 10-point deficit to secure a narrow 18-17 victory over the Scottish outfit in their Heineken Cup opener at the Cardiff City Stadium.
Afterwards, the relieved Blues coach admitted there was room for improvement from his side.
He said: "We didn't play as well as we'd like, but Edinburgh always cause us problems.
"They matched our physicality, and were always dangerous with ball in hand. But most of their breakaways and line breaks were caused by our inaccuracies."
Wayward kicking
Young also agreed that the 14 points which were lost because of the wayward kicking of the normally reliable Dan Parks made life harder than it needed to be.
He said: "It would be nice to have had that buffer, but there are some games when you have to roll your sleeves up and grind out the victory, and it was like that tonight."
Looking ahead, Young believes his side must be at their best if they are to succeed at Castres next weekend.
"We know we've got to improve," he said. "We're expecting a real tough physical battle, and we know how hard it is to win in France. We'll need to be at our best."
Gutsy effort
His Edinburgh counterpart, Rob Moffat described his side's performance as "a gutsy effort", but still lamented the loss.
"We weren't far away," Moffat said. "But it's not enough to be good losers. We made some basic errors which stopped us building pressure, and we gave away two or three daft penalties in the first half. We were lucky that Dan Parks missed them.
"At least we picked up a losing bonus point and that could prove to be vital because this group is going to be tight."
