Dai Young was thrilled to see Cardiff securing maximum points against Brive on Saturday, but insists they can take their performance to another level.
The Blue and Blacks ran in seven tries to secure a 41-0 win on the opening day of European action, and will now travel to Newcastle for the second pool stage match next week.
While there were plenty of positives and work-ons to take from Saturday’s victory, Young expects to face a tough challenge at Kingston Park next week but has challenged his side to impress consistently.
“We would have settled for that before the game. But the nil is just as pleasing as the seven tries,” said the Director of Rugby.
“Lots of things didn’t go as well as we would’ve liked but we certainly would have settled for that before the game. I wasn’t totally comfortable going in at half time, and I thought we should’ve had a few more points on the board in the first half.
“That first 10 minutes of the second half for me was huge because if they’d have scored a try, then that could have fed their confidence and their belief.
“We could’ve got a bit jittery but to be fair we kicked on. However, we didn’t really get out of third gear to be honest.
“We know that we’ll need to be a lot better next week. But we couldn’t have got much more out of tonight.
“We scored some good tries, the defence held up as did the set-piece. The scrum was good, we started off really well in the line-out and scored two driving line-out tries. We had some problems aerially in the line-out, which we need to sort out for next week, but we’re confident we can do that.
“We left a few points out there but like I say, we certainly would’ve settled for that. It’s job done, we’re happy with the result and we’ll move on to next week.
“We know we’ll have to go up a couple of gears to get a victory against Newcastle. Yes we won tonight, but not being disrespectful, I think we were in third gear for most of the game and we’ll need to step up at least two gears next week.
“Newcastle are a good team and are very strong at home. I’m sure they’ll be giving this competition their best crack.
“We spoke before the game that we’ve got good history in this competition. If we can play some good rugby, there’s no reason why we can’t pick up some wins and if we can do that, who knows, we can get through to the knockout stages.
“But we’ll continue to take it one game at a time. I’ve told the players after the game that it’s very much half time in this block. We’ve had a good first half but we need to make sure we back it up next week.”
Amongst those on the score-sheet was Lloyd Williams, who capped off a milestone 250th appearance for the club with a Player of the Match display.
Young paid tribute to the international scrum half, and was pleased to see the occasion marked with a win.
“He deserved that because for anybody to put 250 games together for any club is a huge achievement,” added the former Wales prop.
“But Lloyd will tell you himself that he’s still got plenty of rugby left in him. He isn’t finished there, but as you can see tonight he’s still a quality operator.
“The players were determined to make sure that they would get the right result for him tonight.”