A better day at the office this weekend. Our forwards were able to dominate the Dragons in a way they could not quite manage against the Scarlets the previous weekend, which along with massively improved weather conditions, ensured that the skillset of our decision-making positions were not exposed in the same brutal manner.
The scrum went well, and the line out was more accurate, but at the cost of having to opt mainly for a safe short ball, rather than trusting Parry to make the longer throw. The Dragons were able to counter our maul relatively easily until we elected to try a longer ball that led to the try for the excellent Morgan Morris.
What should have been a comfortable half time lead was made closer than it should have been by a couple of instances of incredibly soft defending by our back three. Not the inexperienced Dewi Cross, who looked organised and dependable, but the other members of that group, who should have sufficient experience to know by now how to deal comfortably with non-threatening attacks close to the touch line.
In the second half the Dragons briefly threatened but having players of the calibre of Nicky Smith Will Griffiths, and Rhys Davies to come off the bench, meant there was no way back for them, and there was time for a delightful cameo performance from Max Nagy, who, on admittedly brief evidence, looks a player with potential. There were flashes of inspiration from Reuben Morgan-Williams that helped secure the win, and in contrast to Sam Davies, the goal kicking of Luke Price was excellent. Outside his goal kicking though, his decision making, ponderous distribution and short line kicking is putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on the team. There are a lot of eggs in the Gareth Anscombe basket if this team is to compete against the better teams.
Despite a comfortable and well-earned victory it was hard not to notice how fluent their back division was compared to ours, which in the main looked laboured and unable to put any pace on the game. We seemed to be using our full back as some kind of crash ball specialist and as Alun Wyn showed in the final try, he probably has better distribution skills than half our back division.
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