Jason Harries says there is more to come from Cardiff Blues as they look to build on last week’s Guinness PRO14 win over Toyota Cheetahs.
Wales’ Capital Region returned to winning ways against the South African outfit, as tries from Aled Summerhill and Josh Turnbull sealed the Blues’ second victory of the campaign.
This week attention turns to the opening weekend of the Challenge Cup, with John Mulvihill’s side travelling to Italy to take on Calvisano.
Harries admits the Italian outfit are a bit of an unknown quantity, but insists his side will be concentrating on their own game at Stadio San Michele.
“It’s going to be a little bit of the unknown. They’re playing in the Italian Top 12 division, and they’ve got some big, big forwards,” said the former Wales Sevens international.
“But it’s more about us going out to Calvisano and imposing our game on them and not worry too much about the opposition.
“We’ve spoken about how well we played on Saturday night, but there’s more to come as well.
“Leading up to the Cheetahs we concentrated on how we play and how we impose ourselves on the game, and from the kick off we played how we wanted to play and put our stamp on the game.
“It’s going to be the same again this week in Calvisano, and if we look after ourselves and the way we want to play, then we’ll get the right result.
“We’ve got Leicester at home the following week, and they’ve been on the top table for many years and it will be nice to play against them in the Challenge Cup.
“We played them in pre season last year so we know what they’re like and it will be good to have them at the Arms Park on an European night.”
The win over Cheetahs brought an end to a four-game losing streak for the Blues.
Harries hopes the win will kick start his side’s season, as they look to gain further momentum from the European campaign.
“It’s been a little bit of a slow start on our behalf after going away to the Kings in the first game and picking up five points.
“To lose the next four was disappointing but we bounced back against the Cheetahs on Saturday night.
“Hopefully that will give us momentum going into a new campaign and into Europe.
“Our identity as a team is to be able to play with ball-in-hand and stress teams out in the wide channels.
“It came to fruition last week against Cheetahs. We knew what type of defence they had and we had a game-plan in mind to nullify that and exploit their weaknesses.
“It showed our capabilities as a team and what we can do with ball-in-hand.”