Cardiff forward Josh McNally has warned his teammates they need a huge improvement in their last chance saloon if they are to make the URC play-offs.

While the Scarlets earned a crucial win in South Africa, Wales’ other play-off hopefuls, Cardiff, slipped down from fifth to ninth in the table as they lost 45-21 to the Bulls in Pretoria, while results elsewhere went against them.

But, like the Scarlets, they will go into Friday’s game against the Stormers in Cape Town with their fate still in their hands.

A victory would guarantee them a top eight finish, while a bonus point or two in defeat could yet be enough to get the job done.

Second row McNally said: “Our message before the game was we didn’t want to leave wondering what we could have done. I think in the last 20 minutes, you saw what we could have done.

“But we just didn’t fire any shots in the first half and you give a quality side like the Bulls too much possession and too much momentum, it’s going to be a very hard game to come back from.

“We will look at this performance because it wasn’t good enough. We’ve got a big game next weekend now.”

The visitors trailed 31-0 to the high-flying Bulls at half-time, but tries from Alex Mann, Teddy Williams and Gabriel Hamer-Webb took them tantalisingly close to a bonus point only for them to run out of time.

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Head coach Matt Sherratt said: “If we go back to day one, in terms of this season being about growth, we’ve doubled the games we’ve won.

“If we had said to any of our supporters or anyone at the club that we’d be going into the last game of the season needing to pick up a win or a point or two to be in the play-offs, I think people would have snatched your hand off.

“We will now take our best game to Cape Town, attack the Stormers and try and get Cardiff into the play-offs for the first time, which would be important for the players and the club.”

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The Bulls crossed for six tries in one-way traffic at Loftus Versfeld until the final 10 minutes.

“The first half was very disappointing and things could have got pretty messy,” said Sherratt.

“I said to the players at the break we needed to get two things out of the second half. We needed to earn a bit of respect back and we were obviously trying to get four tries.

“I think we did the first. The boys showed a lot of courage and we stuck at it, but we just fell short with the four tries  and didn’t quite get a point.

“I am proud of how we came back, but it took us too long to get up to speed.”

Sherratt added: “We are disappointed, but we were up against a very good team.

“I genuinely believe it’s the hardest away fixture in the league. It’s the toughest place to come in the competition. 

“I think they’ve won 23 of their 25 games here. There’s the altitude, heat, travel, it’s a tough ask.”

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