John Mulvihill has encouraged Cardiff Blues to express themselves when they kick off the New Year with a Guinness PRO14 derby encounter against Ospreys at Cardiff City Stadium.
They head into the clash on the back of consecutive victories over Newcastle Falcons and Dragons, and will play at Cardiff City Stadium for the first time since 2012.
Mulvihill acknowledges that his side must step up physically against Toby Booth’s men as they look ahead to playing at the Leckwith-based stadium.
The head coach said: “We’d like to thank the Dragons for letting us use Rodney Parade over the last few months and opening their arms for us.
“They’ve made it very easy and the surface, particularly in the start, was brilliant. I don’t think any groundsman in the UK would find the task easy at the moment. They’ve had a lot of rugby on there so the pitch is bound to cut up.
“But we’re looking forward to having a dry, quick surface and the weather looks pretty good this week. We should have fine, crisp weather over the next few days.
“I’ve told some of our boys to go back and watch some highlights of Cardiff Blues v Pau and Cardiff Blues v Scarlets at home to get the energy and the feeling of the way we want to play the game.
“I think we really need to mix it up against them. They’re a team that have kicked the second most in the competition and carried the least in the competition.
“So that points to you that they’ll be kicking a lot of ball so we need to be really good in the air.
“We have some really good outside backs and we need good speed to get into position so we can exploit some little weaknesses they have in their defensive line.
“We need to be really accurate with what we do and they’re a big physical team who will come at us.
“They’ll look to out-scrum us, out-maul us and everytime we face them it feels like scrum, maul, kick.
“Last year we adapted and we got some learning there which we’ll take into this week.”
Last time the sides met, in August, Cardiff Blues came out on top in one of Booth’s first games in charge of the Swansea-based outfit.
Mulvihill says his players are always motivated to play in Welsh derbies and has applauded Booth’s work since taking over at Liberty Stadium.
“We enjoy playing against the Welsh teams. The boys really enjoy getting stuck in against boys that they spend a lot of time with,” added the Australian.
“All the boys know each other well, and they’ll know the things they’re good at and the things they can challenge each other at.
“We’re looking forward to the challenge again this week. We’re in a really tough Conference, but if we continue the way we’re going we can make the top three or four, which gives you an opportunity to make it into Europe next year.
“It was one of Toby’s first games in charge of Ospreys [in August], and they’ve improved a lot since then.
“He’s brought a level of consistency into their programme, and brought through a lot of young kids who didn’t get a lot of opportunities under previous regimes.
“You look at the likes Kieran Williams, and how well he’s playing, and a couple of the young back rowers and the young scrum half, who gets a start each week.
“He’ll learn from Rhys Webb and they’re a good team who are tough to beat. They always hang in there and I’m really looking forward to the challenge this week.”