Despite a number of promising results the Blues ultimately fell short of their goal last season by failing to qualify for the Heineken Champions Cup. But with the capital city region not losing as many players to the World Cup as other sides Gill believes they it can work to their advantage.
“We have to make the play-offs this season and anything less will mean we have underachieved,” said the former Wales prop.
“We 100 per cent need to get back into the Champions Cup. We were disappointed with our end of season review.
“We went through our season as a group and outside of the Welsh derbies we only won one game away from home which was against Edinburgh which is a crazy fact.
“We lost games we should have won away from home against the likes of Zebre and the Cheetahs which cost us dearly at the end of the season.”
There has been a change to the Blues’ pre-season programme this year with the side training at the BT Sport Cardiff Arms Park and Sport Wales. And Gill insists the change of facilities has been a positive for the squad.
“We train at the Arms Park now and the old CAP bar is now the gym,” said Gill. “The changing rooms have all been redone and it’s actually a better facility.
“We then go over to Welsh Institute of Sport (WIS) to train on their 4-G pitch. The boys have been buying bikes and electric scooters so a lot of the boys are whizzing around on these electric scooters now.
“There’s issues in parking in Cardiff down by WIS so we take our bikes back and forth there now which is good.”
