Boss Dean Ryan insists his Dragons are ready for the ‘biggest challenge’ of this season’s Heineken Champions Cup bid when they face Bordeaux-Begles.
Dragons make the trip to France and the Stade Chaban-Delmas without a number of keys squad members, due to several Covid-19 positive cases and close contact players self-isolating.
However, Director of Dragons Rugby Ryan is not looking for excuses ahead of the clash with the Top14 giants.
And he believes his team should embrace the challenge and experience as they strive to enjoy the return to the top table of European rugby.
“I think there are a number of reasons that you could have started offering up as excuses,” he said.
“But we will always throw everything at it and whoever comes in will do that again this weekend.
“This will probably be the biggest challenge of the Champions Cup campaign for us.
“Bordeaux away, a great, powerful French side, so it’s going to be a huge challenge for us, but we are determined to enjoy ourselves in this tournament.
“We waited a long time to be in it, we know that we have to learn from it and we’ve got to work very hard to be competitive.
“It’s an enormous challenge this week, but I’m confident we will be in the right space to do that.
“We are happy that Dragons will be ready to go at the weekend,” he added.
“We’ve got people that come into that position, people that are competitive.
“Are we as strong as when those eight (currently ruled out) are there? No, we’re not and that’s a real shame that some of those players won’t get this experience.
“But that just means it offers the door for someone else to come in.
“We are going to enjoy it; we are going to give some opportunities to people that can come in and experience it and hopefully learn from it and will be better for it.”
We waited a long time to be in it, we know that we have to learn from it and we’ve got to work very hard to be competitive...
