Lawrie: "It's another vital game for us."

• 6 November 2020
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​Get the latest from Assistant Forwards Coach Stevie Lawrie as he chats building confidence and taking opportunities ahead of Monday night’s match up with Cardiff Blues.

Stevie – it must have been nice coming in this week and reviewing a win. How have the squad been in the build-up to Monday night’s match?

“To be honest, we spoke about being as ruthless as we’d always be and make sure weigh up the positives and the negatives so we get improvement into next week.

“Sometimes it’s easy to just come in and gloss over things because you’ve got the win. We’ve been very honest, there are areas of our performance that could improve – so we’ve looked at them and had a positive week of training

“I think it’s going to be a very different game this weekend, in terms of looking at the weather and also how Cardiff want to play – and how we want to play normally too.

What have been the work-ons and what needs to improve as we head into another Conference clash with Cardiff?

“The game against Scarlets was a bit of a match in isolation – just because of the weather –but we’ll look at our accuracy around about our set-piece, and we’ll continue to look at how we apply pressure through our kicking game, as well as how we pick up the tempo when given the opportunity.

“Obviously, there was zero opportunity for that against Scarlets because of the weather, but those are key areas we need to keep focussed on as we move forward into this week.”

We’ve already seen younger players given opportunity this season, and we’re likely to see further academy players given game time in the coming weeks – have you been impressed with their attitude so far?

“The younger guys have been excellent, and they’ve put their shift in while in the non-23.

“We’ve spoken about opportunity and from a forwards point of view, they’re involved in units every week and every session.

“So they understand the levels that they need to get to – but it’s about when they get out there, they then take that opportunity.

“We talk about falling back to the levels of our training, and that’s really important for these guys that they have confidence in the fact they’ve been through the process so that when they get this opportunity, they’re in a good place to take it.

“Because this is another vital game for us, at home, at BT Murrayfield and against Conference rivals Cardiff.”