Following Cardiff’s epic 22-24 Welsh derby victory over the Dragons in the United Rugby Championship, here are our five takeaways.

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It was a real dogfight in the Welsh derby as the Dragons applied the early pressure as they looked to end a 19-game winless streak in the league against Cardiff. Filo Tiatia’s side looked on track to finally get a win over their rivals as they ran out to a 15-0 lead thanks to tries from Aaron Wainwright and Rio Dyer.

However, Cardiff fought back before the break with Teddy Williams getting the visitors on the board as he grounded the ball on the line. Josh Adams cut the Dragons’ lead even further early in the second half with a wonderful run with Gabriel Hamer-Webb putting Cardiff ahead for the first time before the hour mark.

Scrum-half Rhodri Williams re-ignited Dragons’ hopes of finally beating Cardiff when he darted over with just over 10 minutes to play but the visitors completed the comeback with Evan Lloyd going over at the back of a rolling maul.

Warren Gatland boosted

Adams and Taulupe Faletau have been hugely missed this year for Wales with the latter unavailable for the entirety of 2024 and the former only playing the Six Nations.

However, the pair are now back to full fitness and look set to give Warren Gatland a huge boost in terms of experience but also quality as world-class operators in their respective positions.

The clash against the Dragons was Faletau’s second match back since April but the brilliant back-rower showed no signs of rust with a trademark quality shift on both sides of the ball. He made key turnovers one of which being a brilliant rip while he regularly made metres with the ball in hand and didn’t shy away from contact on defence. For much of his career, Faletau has been consistently excellent and today was no different.

A further positive for Gatland was the performance in the opposing number eight jumper with Aaron Wainwright also enjoying a fine outing. The 27-year-old was also impactful in all facets of the game and scored a wonderful first-half try as he left Cardiff defenders in his wake as he thundered over the line from a set play.

Then there was the performance of Adams who is also renowned for his technical excellence. He was excellent under the high ball, sharp on defence and a real threat with ball in hand with a perfect example of that being his stunning run to cross the whitewash early in the second half.

For his efforts, Adams was named man of the match and rather fittingly so too.

Angus O’Brien’s moment in the spotlight

There will always be a place in squads for men like Angus O’Brien. Perhaps a player that isn’t really going to press for international honours but regularly produces strong and consistent performances at club level and every now and then, have an absolute blinder. For O’Brien, the occasion of his 100th Dragons game was his time to shine.

While he wasn’t flawless from the tee, his open was nigh-on faultless as he dictated play, kept the Dragons in the right part of the pitch and came up with key interventions.

His kick for Rio Dyer’s try was as good as it gets as he dropped the ball in the smallest of gaps while he produced a stunning 50:22 too.

He pulled the strings wonderfully from minute one to 80 and will be smitten that his 100th appearance ended with a victory with him being a key cog in the performance that almost resulted in a historic win over their rivals with the fly-half even sensationally giving his team one last shot with an extraordinary catch above his head after Callum Sheedy’s missed shot at goal.

Woodman presses for higher honours

Among one of Wales’ many issues in 2024, particularly during the latter stages of the Autumn Nations Series, was the lineout and matters weren’t made any better when Adam Beard was ruled out of the clash against the Springboks.

The set-piece will be high up on Gatland’s fix list ahead of the 2025 Six Nations but with doubt around Beard’s availability for the Championship, the Wales head coach will be looking for a short-term successor and today Dragons’ youngster Ryan Woodman threw his hand up high for selection as pinched a hat-trick of Cardiff throws in the first half.

The 20-year-old has featured mostly on the side of the scrum for the Welsh region but has really made the most of his shift into the engine room against Cardiff and could make the step up into international in the position where he represented Wales at youth level. His ability to nick the throws of Dafydd Hughes stifled much of Cardiff’s attack as they just didn’t have the platform to launch from.

It wasn’t just at the lineout where he showed what he is capable of as he thundered into tackles and rucks, coming up with a pilfer early in the second half.

Gatland has been forced to turn to youth in his second stint as head coach and while there are some great prospects available to him in the second row, Woodman made a strong case to be included in the mix in 2025.

Dragons on the up?

In November, the Dragons made the shock announcement that Dai Flanagan had vacated his role as head coach with his assistant Filo Tiatia taking over on an interim basis.

This was after a dire start to the season where they had won just once in five games in the URC. Tiatia’s first game in charge against Cardiff in November showed signs of improvement as they lost by just eight, as the side fell four short against Montpellier in the Challenge Cup but notched up a win over Newcastle the next week.

On Thursday, there were more positives than negatives from their performance as they managed to apply the pressure on a high-flying Cardiff outfit who leaked penalties in the opening quarter. Their lineout was excellent, their defence kept Cardiff at bay for much of the match.

In the end, they were just not good enough to hold out for the win after crucial individual errors but on the whole, there was a lot of pride to take away from that performance with significant improvements made in the last two months on full display.

The big question is whether they can turn those positive performances into positive results and there is no better time to do it than against another rival with the Dragons facing off against the Scarlets on the first day of 2025.