NEWPORT Gwent Dragons will be far better in next Sunday’s first home Magners League game of the season against Glasgow, pledges coach Paul Turner.

Angry words were directed at the players and will be again in training this week after Saturday’s opening- day shocker against unfashionable Connacht in Galway when the Dragons were crushed 40-17.

It was their biggest reverse against the basement team, one point worse than their 39-17 setback in season 2008-09, and it was their seventh successive defeat at the Sportsground.

“That was unacceptable,” stormed a shell-shocked Turner almost at a loss to explain why they under-performed so badly when they were warned yet again about the risks of facing a fired-up Connacht side on their own patch.

“We didn’t do the right things, we talked about being smarter here but we got soft,” he admitted. “A lot of players have got to take a hard look at themselves after this.

“It was a really disappointing performance, but we have got to try to lift them for a home game next week. We’ve got to get better, it’s as simple as that.

“It’s not good in the dressing-room at the moment, it’s going to be back to the drawing-board, we should not be that far off.

“We’ll have to get better because this was as poor a performance as I’ve seen. Some people have got to put their hands up because we’ve got to improve for the Glasgow game.

“We’ve been here before, we knew it was coming and we had to deal with it. We talked for most of the week about a big defensive effort, but within 90 seconds or so we leaked up the middle.

“They had far more energy in the first half and their intensity rocked us, but we knew that. Fifteen Connacht players played far better than us, they upped the intensity and we didn’t make it.

“But at half-time and then when we got back to 20-12 we had a couple of chances, we could have dropped a simple goal to make it 20-15 then it was game on, but we left the ball on the park.

“We missed 20 first up tackles and you can’t win with that kind of indiscipline.

“Our defence was disappointing, I don’t mind not scoring so much but I don’t want the opposition to score down the other end.”

Turner did offer the lack of rugby by some key players due to injuries hanging over from last season as some excuse, but he still had a real go at others, though declining to name names.

“Some players were just coming back after long injuries and some like Gavin Thomas and Rob Sidoli had had no game time at all,” he admitted.

But he added significantly: “There are a lot of youngsters back home who would not have made the mistakes we did today.

“We have not got great resources behind the scrum at the moment and we will have to look at that, but sides who win here are relentless.

“We were after half-time, but we came away with nothing and we made far too many mistakes against a Connacht side who played it really simple.

“They were good at taking their opportunities and they punished us every time we made an error.”