Gethin Jenkins was pleased to secure a bonus-point win over Dragons RFC but he admits Cardiff have plenty to work on as they head into Europe and the Christmas derbies.
The Blue & Blacks ran in four tries as they secured back-to-back wins with a victory far more flattering than the 31-23 scoreline suggests.
Read the full match report and scroll the stats here.
However, it was a far from complete performance in a stop-start encounter, in which Cardiff inflicted the telling blows in a 20 minute purple patch, either side of half-time.
Alex Mann was the first to cross, powering over for his first try for the club following a sustained period of pressure. Harri Millard then finished spectacularly, cutting inside on the stroke of half-time.
Following the break the Blue & Blacks asserted their dominance with Sheedy barging over following an electric Josh Adams break and Rey Lee-Lo put over from an intricate tap penalty.
However, defence coach Jenkins, is still looking for a complete performance and insists Cardiff must find a way to start games better.
He said: “It’s satisfying with the result and the fact we got five points but there’s definitely a lot of stuff that we were disappointed with in terms of our performance.
“Our discipline wasn’t good enough in our first half. We were lucky that the Dragons probably didn’t put a few more points on the scoreboard. So we got off scot-free, scoring just before half time, giving us some momentum going into the second half.
“Going forward we’ve definitely got to look at a few areas there. Why did we give away so many penalties in that first half? And most of them are our doing.
“We gave them a lot of territory, a lot of chances in our 22. They’re only going to add up at the end of the day, tire the forwards out and lose us momentum in the game, which happened. But we’re glad we turned the tide towards the end of the first half and had some momentum going into the second half.
“But at the end of the day, we came out with a result. It’s a tough time to play the Dragons in terms of both of us had a break, they’ve got a new coach so to come off with a win is good.
“We’re four from seven, so for us we’re looking to improve every week. One of the big things is can we grow? We keep pushing that message to the players.
“We’ve got a group that came in at the start of the season, some new faces, some younger boys coming in. So we’re working hard every week to try and put things in place that we can go out there and put performances in. Like I said, our performance wasn’t too much to our liking, but take the win and look at things that we can work on.”
The victory was Cardiff’s 19th in a row over the Dragons in league competition and much was made of that record in the media before and after Saturday’s encounter.
But Jenkins insists it is not a relevant statistic to the team and something that counts for little on the pitch.
He added: “We as coaches were aware of it, we probably didn’t mention it to the players, I think we were focusing on putting our performance out.
“The Dragons have been in a lot of tight games this season so we knew they were going to be tough to break down and they proved that, especially like I said the first half hour. We could have put our foot down a little bit more, come 60 minutes when we had that lead but we sort of put our foot off the gas.
“We’ll take the points, but probably some big areas we need to look at.”
Cardiff are next in action at the Arms Park against Toyota Cheetahs on Saturday, December 14, before hosting the Ospreys on New Year’s Day. Tickets for both fixtures are available now.