With Storm Dennis set to hit the United Kingdom and Ireland over the coming days, John Mulvihill believes his side are suitably prepared for the infamous conditions at The Sportsground this weekend.
Following more than a month since the last Championship game, Cardiff Blues return to Guinness PRO14 action this week with a trip to Galway on Saturday evening.
In preparation for the encounter in the west of Ireland, the squad have participated in opposed training against Dragons and Cardiff RFC.
As we head into the business-end of the campaign, the head coach remains confident in his side’s chances as the race for the top three in Conference B heats up.
“We’re looking forward to getting involved again. We gave the boys a week off a couple of weeks ago, and had good preparations last week,” said Mulvihill.
“We’ve had a 10-day preparation into Connacht away and this will be a very important game for us.
“They’re a quality outfit and are only missing one international player so we’ll need to be at our best to win, but I’m sure we can do it.
“We’ve been keeping an eye on the weather, and it looks pretty horrendous. We trained on Monday and Tuesday in poor weather over here, with the hailstones coming down on Tuesday.
“We’ve given ourselves good preparation into the game this week.
“We’ve set ourselves up quite nicely so far, with five wins and five losses. Some of those losses could’ve been wins and we’ve missed out on a few bonus points.
“We’re in with a shout because we’re playing Connacht twice, Scarlets, Edinburgh, Munster and Benetton. They are the games that will have a big bearing on the seeding in our Conference.
“We also have some decent games in the cross-overs as well.
“If we win six of our 11 games remaining, we’ll be in with a shout. If we win seven, then we’ll definitely be in the play-offs.
“The results, even from week-to-week, change to nature of the standings in that table.
“But all we can concentrate on is what we do from week-to-week, starting with this week and seeing if we can take something from this Connacht game, which would set us up nicely.
“We’ve had an opportunity over the last few weeks to sit down as coaches and see how we can get out of the cycle of that 50-50 nature in our results.
“Players have bought into that as well and we’ll do a few little things around the place which will be different to try to spark it up heading into the last part of the year.”
The Cardiff Blues head coach is also delighted to welcome a number of players back from injury, with the likes of Rory Thornton, Kristian Dacey, Kirby Myhill, Hallam Amos and Ioan Davies available for selection ahead of the trip to Galway.
The Australian added: “We’ve got long-term injured boys like Rory Thornton, Kristian Dacey and Dmitri Arhip, who will all be available for selection this week.
“We’ve got a good bill of health for this time of the year, which is good.
“We’ve got through the tough period.
“We’re quite narrow in our outside backs at the moment, because of international duty and injuries, but we’ll get there.”