The Blues were beaten 26-8 at Bath on Friday night as they failed to find the boost they were looking for ahead of the trip to Galway.
The likes of Sam Warburton, Leigh Halfpenny, Lloyd Williams, Sam Warburton, Bradley Davies and try-scorer Alex Cuthbert all featured for the first time since the Wales tour of Australiabut the Blues couldn’t bounce back from earlier losses to Worcester and Gloucester.
But although Davies admits the result and performance at The Rec were disappointing, he insists the experience picked up by a number of youngsters will stand them in good stead this season.
“It shouldn’t affect morale – we’ve got to be a bit more mature than that,” said Davies.
“We’ve got a situation where we’re trying to build something positive to move forward. A lot of people have been thrust into the frontline and we’ve got to learn and learn quickly.
“Having these defeats in pre-season is disappointing, but they’re great experience builders. I can hear some people screaming and balling when I say things like that but that’s just the way it is.
“We’ve got some young players who have now got three games under their belt – guys like Rhys Patchell and Cory Allen, kids that are playing at top Premiership clubs and doing well. The youngsters are going to have the opportunity, that’s for certain.
“We’ve got a good group of players and we want to be successful. We’ll be trying to do that in spades this year – there’ll be no lack of effort that’s for sure.”
The Blues were the more enterprising side against Bath but the game was already beyond them before Jack Cuthbert added a second home try with 10 minutes remaining.
Davies saw his side struggle to dominate the territorial stakes and he pulled no punches in his overall assessment of their final friendly outing.
“It was a disappointing way to end the pre-season. There were some positives to take out of it but there’s a lot of frustration more than anything else,” added Davies.
“The first-half was a bit of a kick fest and we didn’t manage that as well as we could have. We caught the ball superbly well but we didn’t manage the situation off those catches. In the second half we did better in the first 25 minutes but I made a lot of changes with Connacht in mind and the game petered out a bit. Overall it wasn’t good enough.
“We’ve had a good, tough pre-season, though, and this was a tough experience for us. Connacht is the start of the serious stuff and we’ll be ready to go. Now we’ve got to go and win some games.”
