Kingsley Jones has admitted to deep frustrations with his Newport Gwent Dragons side after they failed again on their travels.
The Dragons lost the Boxing Day derby against the Cardiff Blues 27-16, a result which means the region have now lost 20 successive Pro12 matches away from Rodney Parade.
Steven Shingler’s 17 points ensured the Blues won a keenly contested meeting.
The outside half scored his side’s first try and made another for Josh Navidi, with three conversions and two penalties completing his match tally.
Kristian Dacey scored the other try for Blues with Ashton Hewitt scoring one for Dragons. Angus O’Brien completed their scoring by converting that try and kicking three penalties.
The Ospreys now head to Rodney Parade on New Year’s Day and Jones said: “We can’t do anything about what’s just gone on out there, we just have to use the time over the next six days to make sure we are better.
“But this was an opportunity missed. We are good enough to come here and do better than that and have six days to turn that around.”
The Dragons have won their last five on the spin in Newport but have failed to reproduce that form on their travels, with Jones frustrated by their error count and a turgid, scoreless second half.
“We talk about accuracy a lot and it’s been better this season but we gave the Blues two kicks out on the full and the chance to attack us,” he said.
“The message before the game was discipline and playing the game outside the 22, if we’d done that I felt we would have won.”
“There are lots of little things in the game that I am disappointed with from ourselves but also a couple of decisions, big decisions that tend not to go your way away from home,” he continued.
“We will be looking hard at ourselves and have six days to turn our inaccuracies into a positive performance against the Ospreys. I don’t think we are far away but at the highest level the detail is the difference in big games.”
The Dragons made a dreadful start, falling behind after only a minute. A poor kick from O’Brien gave Blues a platform in the home 22, from which Shingler brushed aside some weak tackling to score the opening try.
The visitors responded with their first points with a penalty from O’Brien after an under-pressure Cardiff scrum infringed, but Shingler soon nullified this score with a penalty of his own.
After 18 minutes, Blues suffered a blow when centre Rey Lee-Lo was sin-binned for a high tackle on O’Brien before the outside half recovered to kick the resulting penalty.
Within minutes, Dragons also went down to 14 men with lock Rynard Landman yellow-carded for clearing out Alex Cuthbert without the ball.
Shingler kicked the penalty before their opponents scored their first try. A clever kick through from O’Brien was easily collected by Hewitt for the wing to score with O’Brien’s conversion bringing the scores level after 25 minutes.
Both players returned from the sin-bin just in time to see Dacey crash over from close range. Shingler converted before O’Brien added a penalty from the halfway line.
With the last movement of the half, Blues struck a crucial blow when Shingler sailed through a gap in the Dragons defence to send Navidi over. The conversion was successful and Blues led 27-16 at the interval.
Dragons sent on six replacements in an attempt to reverse their fortunes but the third quarter was error-ridden and uneventful with no additions to the scoreboard.
The Dragons’ substitutions made no impact as the hosts continued to dominate the second half and they should have extended their lead but Matthew Morgan missed a straightforward penalty attempt.
Morgan was entrusted with the kick as Shingler had taken a heavy blow, which forced him to leave the field after 67 minutes.
Nicky Robinson replaced him but he could not provide the spark needed to reward Blues’ second-half superiority by picking up a bonus point.
