“Plenty of positives and plenty to work on” – that was the verdict of Scarlets head coach Dwayne Peel after Saturday’s 33-19 victory over the Barbarians.
Scarlets ran in five tries to clinch the win in the Phil Bennett Memorial Match with a number of players putting their hands up in the first outing of the season.
Peel said: “I thought it was a great occasion. There was a good crowd here and it was not a typical Barbarians game, a bit of needle, a few scuffles here and there, which I think the crowd liked. It was good for us.
“The first passage of play was four and half minutes which was a bit of a shock for the boys! We didn’t really want it to be a wide open game, we wanted to play at our speed. I thought we did that and scored some nice tries. Defensively, we were at it as well, we really got after them, we were physical and didn’t allow the Baabaas to play.”
Peel added: “We made a lot of changes at half-time, they were a pretty experienced team and we did well to go on and win the game. As a coaching team you look at systems rather than players and I thought we played some good stuff. There was a desire to work for each other, which was important.”
Asked about the performance of the four debutants – Ioan Lloyd, Taine Plumtree, Ed Scragg and Teddy Leatherbarrow – Peel added: “The new players were good, every one of them played well. I was pleased with all four new caps and I thought Ben Williams was excellent on his first real start at eight.
“Obviously, we have a lot of work to do. We had a good review on Monday, have a few days off now and then we will get back into it for the matches against Cardiff and Dragons before we go to South Africa.”