NEW boss Bernard Jackman starts work with his Dragons side this morning with a pledge to give them licence to run from deep.

The Irishman has taken over from Kingsley Jones as head coach of the Rodney Parade region and his squad return to their Ystrad Mynach training base today for the beginning of a new era.

Jackman is charged with improving the Dragons' fortunes after they finished with just Zebre beneath them in the Guinness PRO12 last season with a record of four wins from 22 games.

He has vowed to try and achieve that playing more expansive rugby after the region, deprived of game-breakers Hallam Amos and Ashton Hewitt for much of the campaign through injury, managed just 38 tries in 22 games.

Jackman's Grenoble suffered relegation last season after financial problems but they did score 58 times in 26 games to be ranked eighth in the Top 14 try charts while the previous season only the top-six play-off teams bettered their tally of 60.

The Irishman believes recent history shows that who dares wins in domestic competition.

"Look at the final of the PRO12, the Scarlets had the best attack at the tail end of the season," he said.

"Connacht had the best attack the year before and Glasgow did the year before that. In the Aviva Premiership the final was Exeter and Wasps, the two best attacking sides.

"The game changes from time to time in terms of what's in vogue but at the moment there are opportunities to play an attacking brand of rugby.

"The Dragons don't have a massive pack who can bully teams, so we have to play and think clever. We will be playing high-tempo, ball-in-hand rugby and looking to score tries from deep."

Jackman is head coach but the former hooker is also in charge of the attack and knows what he wants from his charges.

He has pledged that there is no hierarchy and that everyone starts afresh, but he will be watching like a hawk from the first minute on the training paddock.

"I have a clear idea of how I want to play but what will dictate how quickly we get there is how quickly we can teach the players that, how good their skill set is and how fit we get them. These things don't happen overnight," said Jackman.

"When we get stuck in we will see who has the skill set to play the type of game we want to play. If they don't we've got to make a personal development programme to give them a chance to get up to speed as quickly as possible.

"We are not going to play the full extremity of that gameplan until we have the skill, so gradually have to get there."

Jackman will also be working closely with forwards coach Ceri Jones to improve the Dragons' set piece, which was solid for much of last season before creaking at the end of the campaign.

"If we can't improve our scrum then we will struggle to implement the type of game that we are going to play, so it's high priority," he said.

"But everything is high priority – 11th in the league means there weren't many things that we were excelling at.

"Unfortunately, and this is the truth, there is not really an area of the game where we are in the top four. To be a top team we need to have areas where we are better than the rest."