Captain Hill admitted the team were ‘gutted’ after a 23-15 defeat to Cardiff Blues at Rodney Parade on Saturday evening.
However, he insisted the first 20-minute performance – as Dragons roared out to a 12-0 lead with two well-worked tries – showed the rich potential in the squad and that they are on the right path.
“I think the boys really fronted up in a typical derby,” he said. “It was very fierce encounter with some big hits.
“I think our defence was pretty good and we were on top for a lot of the game, and just a couple of lapses in concentration probably killed it for us at the end.
“If you look at our performance, there’s an improvement, we know we are building to something, but at the end of the day it’s a derby game and we wanted to win, so we’re very disappointed with that.
“There’s a lot of emotion. It’s a loss so we’ll pick ourselves up in the right way and look at those little lapses in concentration and put it right next week.
“We were on top for a lot of that game and controlled the first half,” he added. “We came out and scored two good tries and the boys were right there, but it’s just disappointing to not get the win in the end.
“We’ve looked at it as a first block of six games and we had hoped to come out with three wins and this (derby) could have been the third as we had targeted this game.
“We couldn’t have had a better start. We spoke about getting on top for the first 10 minutes and kicking on from there.
“The crowd were brilliant and they got behind us, as the biggest crowd we’ve had all year. It always is for the Blues derby.
“They were singing early doors and we had our tails up and we looked really comfortable out there until a couple of lapses of concentration in the second half and with the operators they’ve got in behind they pounced on it.”
Dragons scored first half tries through Josh Lewis and Jared Rosser and Hill admitted the Dragons had shown a real threatening edge in that opening 20-minute spell.
“Everyone watching can see there’s massive improvements out there, in defence and attack,” he said.
“Josh Lewis made a number of line breaks and really got the back line going, so it’s probably up to our forwards to get a driving maul try now to add to that and kick on in that aspect of the game as well.”
