Angus O'Brien: Challenge Cup heart-break will fuel Dragons' fire

The Welsh outfit pushed French Top 14 high flyers Montpellier all the way in the semi-final at the Septeo Stadium, before ultimately going down to a 18-12 defeat. It was another brave effort on the road, on the back of successive away victories against Stade Francais and Zebre Parma (twice).

Now the Dragons will look to end a much improved campaign on a positive note as they complete their URC schedule with games at home to Edinburgh, before capping off their season with a Welsh derby against the Scarlets in Llanelli.

Reflecting on the performance in Montpellier, co-captain Angus O’Brien: “It was an unbelievable effort from the boys. Ultimately, we are gutted we didn’t quite get the result. But to go out there and have opportunities to win the game is testament to where we’ve come as a group this season. We’ve got to use that as fuel now to really kick on from here.”

Fellow co-captain Ben Carter said: “We showed a lot of fight and put ourselves in a position to win that game, so we were really disappointed with how it ended. We can be proud of the work-rate, physicality, effort, but we made too many mistakes. That’s what’s really frustrating. We are doing a lot of the hard work and then just letting things slip away.”

Echoing these comments, Dragons head coach Filo Tiatia said: “There was a lot of disappointment with the outcome. It was a could of, should of sort of game. We left a lot of points out on the field.”

But, looking ahead, the former All Black insists there is still much to aim for over the next couple of weeks.
“We’ve got our last home game and a lot of milestones to celebrate,” he said, turning to Saturday’s Rodney Parade meeting with Edinburgh. We’ve got some people that won’t be here next season, so we want to put a show on. We’ve got the Scarlets away after that and that will be our season. We want to finish strong for the group and for our fans as well, so it’s important for us.”