IT was yet another tough day at the office against the Scarlets last weekend and we will be doing everything we can to show that we are better than that in Edinburgh tomorrow.

The Scarlets were in a similar position to us having only won one game and were in a position that we could have taken advantage of.

Unfortunately we just weren’t at the races and it was massively frustrating to fail to follow up on our bonus point win against Treviso.

We had prepped for a big day at the scrum and the driving lineout – the Scarlets had enjoyed plenty of success there in the past, but not this time.

A massive statement was made against a very good set piece pack, with prop Boris ‘the blade’ Stankovich (nickname comes courtesy of a character in the film Snatch) to the fore.

Boris eats, sleeps and dreams about scrummaging and caused all manner of problems for Scarlets tighthead Samson Lee, who did so well in the Tests in South Africa last summer and will be in the Wales front row for many years to come.

The driving lineout was also a success; not only did we stop them having any joy but we scored one of our own with crafty scrum-half Mr Rees taking all the credit after wrestling the ball off our hooker Elliot Dee!

We feel that we have made progress up front this season and another feature of the campaign so far is the outstanding form of openside Nic Cudd.

Cuddy was immense on his return to Parc y Scarlets and the stats don’t lie – he made 17 tackles and had 25 positive rucks.

He has clearly been our star man of late and received an award for player of the month that was voted for by the squad, and being praised by your peers is the ultimate recognition of your efforts.

Preparation for Edinburgh has been different to many weeks as they have an unusual and very specific style of play. They are very passive in drift defence and rely on a simple ‘folding’ strategy.

We have to take advantage of that with our direct plays while our blitz defence, if executed properly, should present us with some great opportunities.

After getting a chartered flight for our game against Connacht and the bus to Llanelli, we enjoy our first overnight stay of the season.

We travel to Edinburgh today and that gives us some extra time together and the chance to finalise some plays.

I’m just hoping the weather's good in a beautiful city. Ours didn’t look too bad last weekend and it was nice to have a wander around and see Newport so busy for the food festival before enjoying catching up with old school friends and former rugby teammates at the Greenhouse in Llantarnam.

I also had the pleasure of playing alongside a few of the boys at Matthew J Watkins’ golf day. A recovery walk around a course is the perfect way to get over bumps and bruises but more importantly on this occasion it was in aid of a great cause in Velindre Cancer Centre.