The Scarlets slipped to a 10-6 defeat on home soil against their biggest rivals despite leading 6-0 until late on in Llanelli.
Easterby felt it was a game the hosts should have won and he admits that losing out in that manner has been hard to take. But the fact that they have an immediate chance to right the wrongs in Swansea tomorrow is a huge plus for the Scarlets and Easterby is keen to witness the kind of reaction on matchday that he has seen throughout the week in training.
“The players have responded well in training this week after the disappointment of Boxing Day. It’s good to have the Welsh derbies back-to-back for many reasons: it’s good in terms of preparation during the week to play the same team again and it gives our players an edge and leaves a taste in the mouth with the desire to put right the previous performance,” said Easterby.
“We need to reward ourselves more for what we have put in – we had a strong finish against the Ospreys and were inches away from stealing that game – so there’s plenty of confidence in our team that we can put in a challenging performance again.”
The Scarlets are without a win in all competitions since late November when they won away at Connacht but Easterby is convinced they are not far from turning the corner.
A heavy defeat at Leinster aside, the Scarlets have produced plenty of quality over the past month or so, as they twice kept pace with French giants Clermont Auvergne until the latter stages of their Heineken Cup clashes and came within a whisker of shocking RaboDirect PRO12 leaders Munster in Cork before conceding a 75th-minute try to lose to the Ospreys a week ago.
“We let the last couple of results slip away from ourselves when they were ours for the taking,” added Easterby.
“We’ve had everything in our control over the past couple of weeks and the results have not matched the effort that has gone in. Some of our decision-making hasn’t been right and we can improve on our accuracy.
“We just seem to have made life more difficult for ourselves by making the wrong decisions at some key moments. However, we’ve learnt from those lessons from and have been able to go into detail this week to put it right and make sure we reward ourselves on Friday at the Liberty.”
