Cardiff Blues will have to create their own momentum in the absence of the fiery festive derby crowds, according to John Mulvihill.
After last week’s Challenge Cup clash against Stade Francais was called off at the 11th hour, Mulvihill’s side return to Guinness PRO14 action on Boxing Day to face Dragons at Rodney Parade.
It will be the first of a trio of festive derbies - with encounters against Ospreys and Scarlets to follow in the New Year - but the head coach will be watching from home as he is currently isolating having been identified as a Covid-19 close contact.
However, Mulvihill is excited for another series of intense Welsh derbies and expects a tough challenge against Dean Ryan’s Dragons side.
“The boys are really looking forward and ready to go. My first derby was actually at Rodney Parade in 2018,” said the Australian.
“They led at half time, and the noise from the crowd was massive, although we’re not going to have that this week.
“We’re going to make sure that we start well and that we put our foot down throughout the game and make sure we come out with a good result.
“The boys enjoy playing down at Rodney Parade, although it will be different again being in the away changing room, but it’s really going to be teams turning up ready to play.
“You’re not relying on any crowd support or noise so we’ll generate our own momentum from within the group.
“We all know how close the derbies are. We won by a couple of points last year. They scored twice but we ground out for a really good win.
“The games before that had a bit more of a break in the scores, but we know heading into the match that the Dragons are definitely an improved side and a team that are on the up.
“But we have some quality within our group that hopefully will get us a good result, but we know it’s going to be very tight.
“We’re going off their league form, which has been decent, but you can mostly throw the form book away when it comes to the Welsh derbies.
“We’re really excited to have three of those on the bounce, and are hoping we can start with a good result down there.”
It will, no doubt, be a very different matchday experience for Mulvihill, who will remain isolated despite a negative Covid test earlier this week.
However, he’s positive that his side have been able to adapt to the hurdles of Covid-19 to the best of their ability and hopes an extra couple of days of training will put Cardiff Blues in good stead ahead of Boxing Day.
“I’m fine. I tested negative during the week, which is good, but unfortunately I have to follow the 10 days process which everyone has to do in Wales.
“But to be fair, it hasn’t changed too much for us. For the last three weeks we’ve decided to go online with all of our meetings. We’ve trialed that over the last few weeks and it tends to work.
“We’ve stream-lined what we do, and we’re in a good shape.
“Not having the game against Stade over the weekend has done us a favour because we know we head into the derbies feeling nice, fresh and healthy.
“We’ve had an extra two days of training so we brought testing procedures early this week, which allowed us to get more gym work and training sessions in, so it’s worked well.
“Something we’ve done a little bit different is that we don’t actually come into the building until after we’ve had our test results. That gives you a bit of assurity that you’re coming into a safe environment.
“All of the close contacts we’ve had have been household contacts so we’ve been pretty safe. We’ve narrowed down what we do in the gym and how many numbers we have and reverted back to what we did in the first few weeks of training after lockdown.
“That means you get a bit more individual training done with the boys, which is good at this time of the year.
“We’ve picked the same team, basically, which were going out against Stade Francais so that group has been training for two weeks.
“The frustration for me is that I’m not physically there at the ground but I did watch our training back from this morning and it did look very sharp.
“I’ve been able to send the boys some notes and we only had two dropped balls in a 40 minute session in this weather so the boys are really switched on and ready to go.”