Dwayne Peel is looking forward to an exciting few weeks ahead for his Scarlets side after they kicked off 2025 with a bonus-point 32-15 victory over the Dragons at Parc y Scarlets.
The home side had the game wrapped up early on, racing into a 29-3 lead early in the second half before, as Peel admitted post-match, “taking their foot off the pedal” in the final half hour.
After moving up to sixth in the URC standings, Scarlets now turn their attention to Europe and a mouthwatering EPCR Challenge Cup clash with Gloucester at Kingsholm a week on Friday.
They then host French club RC Vannes in round four of the competition before welcoming Edinburgh to Parc y Scarlets on January 25 in round 10 of the URC.
Peel said: “It was an important game for us in terms of picking up points, the league positions are so tight at the minute
“We’ve lost four games this season where there has only been a five-point difference in the whole total, so picking up that win was important for us.
“We were carrying a bit of a hangover after the Ospreys – that result hurt everyone. We had the Christmas period off so it was a long time between innings, to use a cricketing term. When we came back in here, it was all a bit flat, but then it was all about building the energy and about being physical and clinical.
“For the first 50 I thought we were that, I thought we played some good stuff. Over the last few weeks you’d see that we’ve been building. Against the Ospreys we made five line breaks in the first half and didn’t finish any of them off and so it was important to finish off our chances and that’s what we did.
“The last 30 minutes was scrappy, there was a lack of discipline at times and some decisions were made that could have gone either way. We’ve been in games for 70 or 80 minutes and today we won the first 50 minutes of the game and then maybe took our foot off the pedal. It’s important that we look at that and that it doesn’t happen again as there are great teams out there who are able to maintain their standard and pressure and that’s maybe one of the targets that we need to work on.
“But we are up to sixth in the table, we take the points and move on.”
Looking forward to what comes next, Peel added: “We have another important game in the URC against Edinburgh in a few weeks and two big games in Europe before that.
Obviously, we want to go through in the Challenge Cup and we have a fantastic place to play next up in Gloucester. I love going to Kingsholm having been there with the Scarlets many moons ago and with Sale as well.
“It will be a great experience, especially for our young boys who have never played there. It is a game we are all looking forward to.”