DRAGONS boss Bernard Jackman has hailed the attitude of his Dragons players at the start of his new regime but is aware of the perils of summer judgement, declaring that “all your ducks are swans” in pre-season.

The Irishman has been running the rule over his new charges at their Ystrad Mynach training base after replacing Kingsley Jones as head coach.

The former Grenoble boss has been laying the foundations of a new game plan – with intent to play with width and ambition – and has already promised to wipe the slate clean.

Jackman says he doesn’t care about last season’s pecking order but is also conscious that those who look bright in July and August won’t necessarily be the men to thrive come the Guinness PRO12 opener in September.

“All your ducks are swans in pre-season! Some guys who look great in pre-season won’t be good when you get to game time, but we’ve made a decent start,” said Jackman.

“We’ve had a really good buy-in and I have been really happy with the players. We’ve got good players and it’s a big opportunity for them to turn that potential into performance.

“Everyone tells me about the potential in Gwent, and there is definitely that here at the Dragons, but we have to be ruthless to turn that potential into results.

“I am really happy with the enthusiasm and the response from the squad, because I have challenged them.

“From day one I have challenged things that I am not happy with and the players have responded really well.

“Nobody has dropped their lip, they have taken things on board and fixed it. That’s all that I want because if everyone was perfect then we wouldn’t have been 11th.”

The Dragons finished with just Zebre beneath them in the Guinness PRO12 last season while they failed to qualify for the knockout stages in the European Challenge Cup and Anglo-Welsh Cup.

They failed to win away all season, lost all their PRO12 Welsh derbies and have not triumphed since beating Russian side Enisei-STM at the end of January.

Jackman is confident of a brighter campaign in 2017/18 but knows that they must improve just to tread water.

“We are not going to kid ourselves, we finished 11th last year. Everyone is going to get better this pre-season so we have to get better faster than everybody else,” he said.

“There are a lot of things that we need to change, we are not changing everything yet because you have to pick your battles and try and change the things that give you the most improvement.

“Then, when you become decent, you lock at the little minutiae and the one percenters that the big teams that win competitions already have.”

The Dragons travel to France for a week-long training camp that culminates with their first friendly against Montpellier on Friday, August 11.

The following afternoon they will lock horns with Northampton at Franklin’s Gardens (kick-off 3pm) with a date against English champions Exeter at Sandy Park (kick-off 3.30pm) rounding off their pre-season on Saturday, August 19.