Matt Sherratt praised Cardiff’s courage as they fought back in vain against Vodacom Bulls, with a crucial encounter against DHL Stormers now on the horizon.
The Blue & Blacks came second best up on the Highveld as the Bulls demonstrated their quality with a clinical first-half performance.
They powered into a 31-0 half-time lead, scoring four tries thanks to a combination of their size and physicality and the guile of Springbok stars Willie Le Roux and Canan Moodie.
Cardiff battled back after the break and won the second-half but they were unable to claim a fourth try to add to efforts from Alex Mann, Teddy Williams and Gabriel Hamer-Webb.
Reflecting on the performance, Sherratt said: “We’re obviously disappointed. We wanted to come here and get points to help us push into the playoffs.
“But if I’m honest, it’s the toughest place to come in the league. If you look at their record, they’ve been in last two finals, I think they’ve won 23 of their last 25 games here. There’s the lltitude, heat, travel, it’s a tough ask.
“It probably took us 40 minutes to get up to speed. I said at half time we need to get two things out of the game, we need to get a bit of respect back and try and get four tries.
“I think we did the first. We stuck at it, it could have got messy and then we just didn’t have enough quality at times. We didn’t put enough together to get the four tries.
“You do probably need a little bit of luck over here as well, as I said it’s a very tough place to come and I think you can see the respect that they showed us with their selection.”
Cardiff travel to Cape Town tomorrow ahead of a showdown with DHL Stormers on Friday night.
Sherratt’s side have now dropped to sixth in the league table and have to pick up points at DHL Stadium to progress.
He added: “If we just go back to probably day one, in terms of this season being about growth, we’ve doubled the games that we’ve won.
“On Friday night, we’ve got the Stormers and I think if we’d have said to any of our supporters or anyone at the club that we’re in last game of the season and we need a point or two to be in the play-off, people would have snapped our hand off.
“So, listen, today was disappointing first half. The boys showed a lot of courage second half, and didn’t quite get a point, but we’re going to Stormers next week, trying to pick up a win or some points to get ourselves in the play-off, which is important for the players and for the club.
“It’s in a six-day turnaround, and that was a tough game, and there’s travel, so we’ll give the players two days now, they need to freshen up.
“I’ve learned the hard way with that is if you try and over-coach in these short weeks and the players take the field with mental fatigue and physical fatigue you’re done before you start.
“So two days off, look forward on Tuesday and Wednesday, team run, walk through and then attack Stormers.”