Dragons will have the perfect opportunity to bounce back following defeat in the East-Wales derby last weekend when they host Ospreys at Rodney Parade on Saturday.
The Men of Gwent produced a late comeback last Friday eventually losing 24-17 to Cardiff.
Despite several positives, including an impressive home debut for Harry Beddall which included 22 tackles and two turnovers, Dragons were unable to overturn Cardiff’s 17-7 half-time lead.
Dragons co-captain Ben Carter was another who put in an impressive shift, making 20 carries along with a hatful of attacking ruck arrivals and hard work at lineout time.
Post match Carter echoed head coach Filo Tiatia’s frustrations around his side’s lack of discipline especially in the first half.
“There’s a lot of good there we’ve just got to be a lot smarter around our discipline,” said Carter.
“You just can’t win these games giving away that many penalties.
“I don’t think you can deny the fight of the players, we don’t just want to make life difficult for teams we want to use our defence to win games.
“There’s an opportunity now to go again next week against Ospreys and we’ll be right up for it.”
Dragons will look to replicate the scenes from last season, where Dragons beat Ospreys with the last play of the game through a try from prop Luke Yendle.
Ospreys have had a mixed start to the season with a difficult opening in South Africa against Bulls and Stormers, before beating Zebre to nil at home, followed by a defeat to Glasgow at the Brewery Field.
Prop Wyn Jones, speaking to S4C after the match, said that Dragons have shown improvements in defence but need to improve their discipline and in turn their possession and territory stats in order to replicate the result from a year ago.
“I think we showed in the second half that we were still in the game and with a minute to go there was only one score in it but that was perhaps a bit late,” said Jones.
“Had we started with better discipline, perhaps it could have been a better outcome.
“Defensively we showed that we’ve improved a lot, but we’re probably defending too much, giving away penalties a bit easily and then having to defend for a long time.
“As a result, we didn’t have enough territory and when we had the ball we were trying things instead of maybe holding onto the ball and trying to get the territory in our favour.”
