Newport Gwent Dragons bowed out of Europe with a 36-19 defeat by Brive at Stade Amédée-Domenech with head coach Kingsley Jones bemoaning the team’s poor form on the road.

The Dragons are a force on home soil but have now lost all 10 of their away fixtures in all competitions this season – and that has been their Challenge Cup Pool 3 downfall this campaign.

“We had a poor start, got back into the game and had enough chances to go on and win it,” he said.
“When we were three points behind with an hour gone I really thought we could and should have gone on to win.

“But it wasn’t this performance that cost us the chance to go through to the knock-out stages again, it was what happened against Enisei-STM in Russia and at Worcester. Our away form simply isn’t good enough.

“You can talk about spirit, attitude and application and we had it all – there were a lot of good things in the game. But when we had chances we made too many errors or took too many wrong options.”

“There were a good things we need to build on, we have got to the stage where we believe we are going to win at Rodney Parade but our away form is very poor.

“All we can do now is see how far we go up the PRO12 table. It is disappointing to be out of Europe because we really enjoyed the knock-out stages in the last two seasons.”