Gareth Anscombe kept his nerve to seal a 19-16 win over the 14-men of the Dragons with the last kick of the game on Friday night. Their ninth straight victory over their East Wales rivals got them back to winning ways following a run of four defeats.
But next up they face a Scarlets side who before today’s clash with the Ospreys, had won 10 in-a-row against Welsh opposition. But Mulvihill believes they now have their winning mentality back ahead of their trip West.
He said: ”If you look at their team, they have 10 international players and they can turn it on at any given day. They’ve got a really good leader in Ken Owens, a really good coaching group, good finishers and they use the ball well.
“Jonathan Davies is on-song at the moment and they will be tough. But we’ll go down there with the mind-set of taking an away win. It will be my first time down there and I’m looking forward to it.”
With the wind and rain swirling at the Cardiff Arms Park, Anscombe kept cool to land the winning kick after a late Jarryd Sage try cancelled out Dan Fish’s score. And Mulvihill hailed his leadership group for steering the ship to victory in testing conditions.
He added: ”We didn’t panic, and when they scored the try at the end I didn’t need to send any messages out because the team is really tight together and there’s some good leaders in there.
“They knew they needed to get into the right area of the field and take their chance when they had it. Our scrum stood up and we got the penalty that we deserved.
“We kept grinding away. There was 50 seconds left on the clock when that last scrum went down and last time we played the Dragons they slowed the game down a lot, so I knew it was our last opportunity. That was a win that we needed, and any way they come, we’re happy with that.”
