Cardiff Blues coach Danny Wilson has admitted his team’s season is turning sour after so much seemed sweetness and light just a few weeks ago.
The Blues have now lost five of their last six Guinness Pro 12 matches after their crisis deepened with a 35-22 home thrashing against Ulster who scored five tries at the Arms Park on Saturday.
It was a result that slipped the Blues back to seventh place in the table and they are now a huge 10 points off the play-off places in a campaign that began with four straight victories.
Wilson conceded: “We have to get out of this period of tough results and back to what we saw at the start of the season.
“This is a good side, a good group of players, we’re having issues at the moment but we’ll work hard to get them right.
“We started the season extremely well but we’ve hit a rough patch with only one win against Benetton Treviso and now we have to gel quickly as a group, get back on the training ground and work hard to put some of the things in recent performances right.”
Ulster are themselves out of the play-off places, but they were far too good for the Blues who have now conceded more points than any of the 10 non-Italian sides in the league.
There is also now a concerning five-point gap between the Blues and sixth-placed Glasgow – meaning all the brave talk in the summer of regaining their place in the premier European tournament – the Champions Cup – appears hollow.
Wales skipper Sam Warburton had been passed fit to return from a shoulder injury against Ulster, but dropped out before the match with a stomach big.
It means Warburton has still only started four of the Blues’ matches so far this season, to go with the eight in total he managed last season.
Wilson added: “Plain and simple it’s not a performance that’s acceptable or good enough from us at home. We conceded points from our lack of accuracy and we keep pressure on ourselves from a huge amount of errors.
“We have conceded 14-points from charge-downs, 14 points from a yellow card, we can’t score from a driving lineout, dropping the ball over the line at the back twice – it’s accuracy which isn’t like us and we have to work hard and be tough on each other.
“Ulster took their chances. For 25 minutes the game was pretty competitive and even but a yellow card and they scored 14-points and we’re chasing the game.
“We had opportunities at the beginning of the second-half to get the game back in grasp but we could do it. We created enough opportunities but we couldn’t finish.”
The Blues now have back-to-back matches against Bath in the European Challenge Cup, before they face a Pro 12 derby against rivals Newport Gwent Dragons on Boxing Day.
