Forwards Coach, Chris Gibbes, said it’s going to be a “pretty painful” few days for the Ospreys as they review their performance in defeat at Parc y Scarlets on Saturday night.
The defeat, only the third in the PRO12 to date this season, made pretty grim viewing for Ospreys supporters at times as their team struggled to get a foot hold in the contest and, speaking to the press shortly after the final whistle, Gibbes was honest in his appraisal.
“I think first and foremost you’ve got to give credit to the Scarlets” was his immediate response when asked for his thoughts.
“I think they were pretty good in most aspects of the game. They put a lot of pressure on us and forced us in to errors we don’t normally make.
“Secondly, we probably didn’t turn up with enough intensity, even though we did talk about it. We knew what was expected of us but we didn’t turn up with enough. We made crucial errors. You look at the set piece, some of the stuff, the scrum stuff and the lineouts that we needed to win, and we didn’t. That’s probably the tale of the game really.
“It’s disappointing, and fair play to them again, they’ve gone and done their homework and I thought their set piece was a lot better, particularly the lineout, this week. That allowed them to get a platform into the game. We didn’t get our set piece, our scrum right, and we’ve got to make sure we get that bit right.
“We knew that coming down here is tough, it’s a hell of a tough place to play. We knew all that was in front of us, we knew what we needed to do what works for us and, when we play well, what we are doing, and we just didn't do that tonight. Fair play to them, they’ve turned up and done it.”
With another Welsh derby next weekend, against the Dragons at the Liberty Stadium on Sunday 11th January, Gibbes is expecting another tough outing for the Ospreys and he acknowledged that coaches and players alike have to dust themselves down and look to start putting things right immediately:
“Yep, and that’s what we’re going to do. We’ve spoken about it in the shed and there’s not much we can do about that now. It’s going to be pretty painful looking back and we’re going to have to take a lot of learning out of it, as we do every week. Our focus is to get the performance right for next week because this competition waits for no one and we’ve got the Dragons on Sunday, another Welsh derby, and they are going to be coming at us hard.
“They’ll be looking at that tape I would say and putting a strategy together so we’ve got to make sure we are better.
“We are lucky, there’s been a few teams at the top of the table turned over, but the thing we’ve got to get right and I keep coming back to it is the performance week in, week out. We weren’t looking too much at the table coming into this, we just needed to make sure we get the performance to beat the Scarlets. We didn’t do that.
“There are some boys out there who’ve served us pretty well over the last few months, in terms of our injuries and whatever, and maybe that showed by the end tonight. That’s taking nothing away from the effort, and they kept going to the end to put some respectability into the performance and result, but we all know we have to be better than that. That’s the challenge for the next couple of weeks and two big home games against the Dragons and Northampton. We have to perform better.”