Last Saturday saw the Cardiff Blues return from a five week tour of Ireland and Italy to their home ground, the iconic Cardiff Arms Park to face reigning Pro 12 champions, Glasgow Warriors. Despite a run of five defeats in a row, including a deserved, yet still humiliating defeat to Italian minnows Zebre, fans I spoke to before the game felt confident that the Blues could upset the form book and pull off an unlikely victory. This confidence was no doubt mainly down to the fact that they had their Welsh internationals returning after their post World Cup break as well as Samoan centre Rey Lee-Lo making his debut for the team.
With fifty five minutes gone, the Blues leading by five points and Glasgow down to fourteen men, it looked as though those fans may well have got it spot on. However, as so often has been the case over the last few years, Cardiff found a way to lose the game, making it six defeats on the bounce and leaving the capital city outfit languishing near the bottom end of the table.
A couple of poor decisions involving chip kicks and an inability to stop the powerful Scottish forwards from making the hard yards contributed to their downfall and, for the fifth time this season, Cardiff’s opponents came away with a maximum point victory having score four tries to Cardiff’s two. At this stage, the leaky defence must be a real concern for Danny Wilson and his coaching staff.
There was a sense of inevitability about the result on the terraces come full-time. Did fans ever truly feel the performance could be sustained for eighty minutes? Yes, the team had shown the commitment and a desire to win that had been lacking the previous week out in Italy and in patches they played some attractive, clever rugby. The worry is that, despite these positives, they can’t finish these games off. Losing becomes a habit in sport and it’s a habit that the Cardiff Blues now have. It says a lot about the contrasting fortunes of the two teams in recent times that, despite coming away with a victory along with a bonus point, Glasgow chief Gregor Townsend described his sides performance as ‘below-par’. It’s clear that good sides now come to Cardiff expecting to win and win comfortably.
In contrast to this, Wilson was left clawing for comfort at the fact that his side had improved their attitudes from the previous week and gave it everything they had. The funny thing is, five years ago, these attitudes would have been reversed. Glasgow would have been in dreamland had they scraped a narrow win at the Arms park whereas Cardiff would have been left questioning how they’d managed to lose to a team so short on quality at that time.
Yet again, for Blues fans the major positive to come out of the fixture was Wilson’s straight talking. He’s clearly a realist and is aware at the size of the task in front of him. Indeed, if he wasn’t before last week, he certainly would have been made aware when, just twenty four hours before the game, several media outlets reported that Blues outside-half, Rhys Patchell (a product of the Blues academy, born and bred in the area and the teams stand-out player so far this year) has decided to join the Scarlets from next season instead of renewing his contract with his home team.
Many Cardiff fans have since been calling for Patchell to change his mind and commit to the cause. However, Wilson’s comments after the game suggest he has a different outlook on the situation. Despite praising Patchell’s performance (and rightly so, he was outstanding), Wilson made it clear that he only wants players that want to be involved in his setup representing the team. I wholeheartedly agree with this judgement.
Before positive results can appear on the pitch, positive changes to the culture need to be made and the largest of those is creating an environment where players turn up each day wanting to do their best for the shirt. If they aren’t willing to do so then the team is better off in the long run without them.
The main reason for Patchell’s decision to leave is said to be that he wants the opportunity to wear the No.10 jersey week in, week out. While it is understandable for such a talented young man to want to hone his craft in the first team and be given the chance to run the show, no one should be given the guarantee of game time, especially in such a pivotal position. If he wants to play at ten for Cardiff instead of Gareth Anscombe, he should continue what he’s doing on the training field and the league pitches and make it impossible for Wilson to drop him.
As a season ticket holder, I’d like nothing more than for Patchell to do a u-turn and commit his future to the Blues. If, however, he’d rather go West and wear red so be it. Thee is talk that he may already have informed the Blues privately that his mind is made up. If so, bench him. Results may suffer and youngsters may need to be rushed ahead.
The reality is that this season Cardiff Blues will not win silverware and, given their league position after seven games, they will struggle to qualify for the top-tier European competition. This is in keeping with fans and staff expectations at the start of the season. Without Patchell in the starting line-up, it is true that performances may dip. Well, they’ve lost six games out of seven…can it get that much worse? We have an outstanding young No.10 prospect waiting in the wings in Jarrod Evans, perhaps the time would be right for him to be given a chance to stake his claim. Let’s hope he’s got a better stomach for the fight than some.
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