Cardiff boss Dai Young has put his players on notice ahead of their chance to repair some of the damage from last week’s loss to Welsh rivals Scarlets.
Annoyed by the nature of his side’s performance in the 35-20 defeat to the 14-man Scarlets, Young has been in no mood to mince his words - he delivered this brutal assessment after the match - and continued that theme ahead the reverse fixture at the Arms Park this Saturday. Noise out of the Cardiff camp has been that the debrief session was uncompromising and the man at the top of the organisation has not hidden his displeasure.
In his pre-match press conference for the return game, Young explained that wholesale changes to his squad would not be coming immediately this summer after players were given an extra year on their contracts due to the pay cuts they took during the Covid-19 pandemic. But there will be real opportunity to change personnel throughout next season and as such he said the players had six months to prove their worth.
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Young warned: “At the end of the day you review every area and we’ve got a real good coaching group here. We review everything honestly and we look at the work-ons. It wasn’t good enough on the weekend. Obviously, there was an honesty chat around that 60 minutes not being good enough. There wasn’t the normal energy and enthusiasm that we would expect from the players and it’s something I’m not prepared to put up with. The players know that.
“My job is to try and get the best out of the squad. I don’t think we’re achieving that yet but what I’ve said to them is that I’ve come here wanting to help players get better, but they’ve got to want to get better as well. Certainly the last 12 months has been trying to raise the bar and trying to improve players. Some have certainly got behind it and some still need a bit of convincing.
“What we’ve said to the players is that they’ve got opportunities over the next six months to keep on convincing me that they should be a part of the plan moving forward. We haven’t been higher than seventh in 10 years. All the squad are contracted, so there isn’t going to be wholesale changes this season. Because of Covid, players took pay cuts and everybody got an extra year because of that. So we’re not in a position to make big changes this year if we wanted to.
“They know they’ve got an opportunity to show that they’re good enough. At the end of the day it’s pretty simple, you work hard to try to change mindsets and convince people but there comes a time where if you can’t influence mindsets and if you can’t bring change, then you have to change them [players].”
Cardiff have not won a game away from home this season, despite the odd impressive showing at their base in the Welsh capital, including a win over league leaders Leinster. It all adds up to a frustratingly familiar season for the club, who look destined to finish in the lower half of the table again, and there is a sense that the defeat down west brought some of those feelings to the surface.
This weekend is an important fixture for the Blue and Blacks. Avoiding a repeat performance in front of their own fans is imperative and it will go some way to repairing the damage in the short term. However, Young points out that the healing nature of a win will not extend to their broader issues.
Young continued: “Moving forward, everybody recognises that we’re not where we want to be and we’ve got an opportunity to put last week’s performance right this week. But it doesn’t really change the real outlook moving forward that we all have to be working hard to get better because some of the performances haven’t been good enough and nobody has got a job for life.
“Most of this squad have been here for over four years and we’ve not achieved anything in four years. Up until now it’s been six coaches in 10 years and [they] wheel the coaches out all the time.
“I really enjoy working with this group, they’re a good bunch of players and we’ve got a decent squad, let’s not forget that. There are some areas that we need strengthening with a bit of quality, which we know, but that’s not going to happen this season with players being in contracts and we haven’t even got a budget for this season. It’s not as if we’re going to be spending a lot of money.
“But players have got the opportunity to show that they’re worthy of being here and that they can help us move forward. That’s what I want. I want as many of these players as possible to be here for the next couple of seasons but that’s pretty much down to them.”
