WHAT WE LEARNED FROM THE BLUES’ DISMAL OPENING-NIGHT DEFEAT AGAINST EDINBURGH

IT was to prove a deeply disappointing start to the new season for Cardiff Blues as they went down to a 20-10 defeat at home to unfancied Edinburgh. Rugby correspondent

surveys what went wrong for Danny Wilson’s men in the PRO14 opener at the Arms Park and what areas they particularly need to improve on. It’s not impossible to be beaten at the breakdown and yet win the match, but it doesn’t happen very often.

In the modern game it is the single most important area, with just about everything else affected by it.

The stark reality is that the Blues came badly second best in that department against Edinburgh. And, guess what, they lost the match. When it comes to the breakdown the most important man of all is the jackal, the player who gets over the ball to secure it in attack and slow it down in defence, winning the penalties and the crucial turnovers.

Cardiff Blues have three outstanding exponents of that artform in the shape of Sam Warburton, Ellis Jenkins and Gethin Jenkins, but all three are absent at the moment.

Openside Jenkins will undergo surgery this weekend having torn his hamstring in the final preseason friendly against Exeter and will be out for up to three months, which is an absolute bodyblow.

Prop Gethin Jenkins, who is like another back-rower over the ball, is still recovering from a knee operation, while flanker Warburton will make a delayed start to the campaign following a post-Lions break.

All of which left Josh Navidi having to wear No. 7 against Edinburgh. Now the versatile Navidi is a superbly consistent performer and, in fact, he was one of the few players to show up well for the Blues, putting in a typically strong display and scoring their only try.

But he has played a lot of his rugby at No. 8 over the last year or so, including on Wales’s summer tour of the South Seas, and his game is more about physicality with ball in hand and in defence, rather than jackling.

He actually reverted to No. 8 just before half-time following Nick Williams’s departure, which meant Josh Turnbull moving to the openside.

So there was no specialist 7 out there for the hosts as the game slipped away from them after the break.

It’s going to be a continuing issue over the coming weeks and Warburton’s return to action can’t come soon enough. You’ve had Hawk-Eye in tennis, cricket and football, now it’s arrived in rugby. The technology has been introduced into the Guinness PRO14 for the new season in a bid to limit the number of head injuries and concussions.

It involves an independent assessor following the game on a laptop and looking out for any collisions or signs of players being in difficulty.

It came into play on the opening night of the campaign, resulting in Blues No. 8 Nick Williams leaving the field just before half-time during the Arms Park encounter with Edinburgh. That was to be the end of Williams’s match, with the Kiwi not returning following his head injury assessment. You hear a lot of talk about the red zone in rugby and the need to come away with points when you get there.

It essentially means the opposition 22. Now the Blues spent a fair chunk of time there on Friday night but were only able to come away with one converted try and one penalty. It simply wasn’t a good enough return. It doesn’t get any easier for the Blues, with a testing trip to Leinster coming up next Friday.

There needs to be a big, big improvement, as coach and captain acknowledge.

“It was a frustrating night,” admitted Wilson.

Hooker Matthew Rees added: “It’s a hard one to take. It was a very disappointed changing room.”

And very disappointing it was indeed.