Don’t get carried away says Evans

New fullback Dan Evans has warned his Ospreys colleagues that they face a tough evening at Rodney Parade on Friday night in round two of the Guinness PRO12 season.

The Wales cap made an impressive Ospreys debut in the 44-13 opening day win over Treviso at the Liberty Stadium last Friday but was keeping his feet firmly on the floor ahead of the early return to his former team later this week.

 

“It was important to get a good start, to get to know the boys” said Evans.

 

“I think I slotted in quite well and hopefully I can build on this performance now. The first ambition is to get regular rugby at the start of the season.

 

“We’ve got a young squad here, and it’s a squad for the future. There’s a lot of talent. We can’t get too carried away with this performance because we’ve got a big game next week against the Dragons.

 

“It’s always nice going back to your former club, and we can take a lot of positives from this game, but it’s tough there when you are the visiting team. We can’t get too fixated on that though we’ve just got to go up there, know what we’ve got to do and hopefully, we’ll do the job up there.”

 

Meanwhile his namesake, outside half Biggar, echoed those views, telling the young squad that they will need to up their game if they are going to return west down the M4 with the points the weekend. Reflecting on the Treviso win, Biggar admitted it was a mixed bag, saying:

 

“Overall it was pretty good. We’ve had a tough pre-season, the results didn’t go our way, but when it came down to it tonight we played some decent stuff.

 

“We need to improve in a lot of areas, working off the ball is one of them where we need to work a bit harder, but all in all it was a positive start which leads us into the season nicely.

 

“There’s a lot of young boys out there who will learn a lot from that. We’re well aware of what’s been said but we just go about our business day-to-day, we’re just trying to do our job week in, week out. 

 

“We know that we are going to have to play a lot better than that but it’s a good stepping stone for the boys to learn from. Some of the boys it’s their first proper season and they’ll learn an awful lot from it. We’ve just got to stick together as a group now.

 

“It will be hugely different next week at Rodney Parade and that’s something that some of the boys may not have experienced. It’s not an easy place to go, it’s difficult surroundings and the crowd get on top of you. You have to make sure you are on the money from minute one or otherwise you’ll get a real stuffing up there. We certainly need to improve, be a lot more accurate.

 

“It’s a very young squad, very inexperienced, and you only get experience from playing, but we’ve got some good players in and around the youngsters who will help them to step up, and take the lead in developing them.

 

“It’s a good start but we’ll have to play better.”