Dragons endured a nightmare 2025 that was winless until they beat Lyon in the Challenge Cup on 14 December, which was followed by a stunning URC victory against Connacht six days later.<\/p>\n
Filo Tiatia’s men finished bottom of the URC last season, but resilient recent displays have given reason for optimism.<\/p>\n
Dragons are currently 15th, but could go 10th with victory against Scarlets.<\/p>\n
Not only do they want to avoid propping up the pile this season, they would love to avoid being Wales’ worst side for the first time since 2019-20.<\/p>\n
Head coach Tiatia believes their battling display at Cardiff provided encouragement.<\/p>\n
“There were some positives, and we stayed in the fight to try and win it at the end,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We were maybe five or 10% off in terms of some physicality parts of game, but we have lots to take forward into Scarlets.”<\/p>\n
Scarlets are currently bottom of the URC, although they do have a game in hand, and recent progress was brought to a dramatic halt against Ospreys.<\/p>\n
“The games are coming thick and fast,” said head coach Dwayne Peel, whose side have Champions Cup fixtures against Pau and Northampton on the horizon.<\/p>\n
“The Dragons is another important game and another tough game for us. We have to make sure we go to Rodney Parade with a spark and full of energy.”<\/p>\n
Like Ospreys, a New Year’s Day win would dramatically change the picture in the URC and give some hope of repeating last season’s charge to the top eight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dragons endured a nightmare 2025 that was winless until they beat Lyon in the Challenge Cup on 14…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-383537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}