Head Coach Ceri Jones insisted there were no excuses for the manner of defeat to Benetton Rugby – and insisted his Dragons now simply had to respond back on home soil.
Dragons suffered a 57-7 defeat at the hands of the Conference B high-fliers at Stadio Monigo – Jared Rosser scoring the only try for the region.
Jones praised the Italians for the victory but admitted his team had repeatedly compounded errors and struggled to stop the home momentum.
“Benetton were very good and credit to them for the way they performed,” he said. “But mentally we were possibly not where we needed to be during the game.
“When Benetton got momentum we had a job to control it. We compounded mistakes with more unforced errors with missed exits and tackles.
“As soon as they got four tries it was a case of them bringing their offloading game and that was difficult to stop once they got into their stride.
We’ve got to learn from this, watch the video back and see where we went wrong,” he added. “You can’t just write it off as a bad day at the office.
“Defensively we were nowhere near where we have been the last month or so. We were really poor, missed tackles and our accuracy in the middle part of the game just fed the beast.
“We lost Ollie Griffiths and James Benjamin in the first half at almost the same time which was disruptive. Lewis Evans also picked up a knock and was struggling, but he had to carry on.
“But it’s no excuse, we have to be much better as a group.”
As soon as they got four tries it was a case of them bringing their offloading game and that was difficult to stop once they got into their stride...
