Forwards Coach Jonathan Humphreys praised his team's composure and professionalism following their RaboDirect PRO12 win over Zebre on Friday night.
The Ospreys avoided a potential banana skin in Italy, with tries from Richard Fussell, Jonathan Thomas and Dan Biggar helping them to victory, and Humphreys acknowledged post-match that it had been a tough night.
“We are pleased with the win” he said.
“It’s a tough place to come and they made us fight every inch for the victory.
“I thought we showed some patches of real intensity, but we did lose our rhythm a bit in the third quarter which allowed Zebre back into the game. They had their tails up and came back to just the one score but the response from us was excellent, we showed good composure to pull ahead again. When it got so tight we could have panicked but instead the boys were disciplined and went back to the procedures we work on all week long, knew their responsibilities. We were professional in our approach and that allowed us to get the job done.
“There were some good performances out there. Sam Lewis was outstanding and Dan Biggar did very, very well. Matthew Dwyer also stepped up to this level from Bridgend well, we asked him to play a full half of rugby and he did a decent job for us. Adam and Eli both came through. They are a bit sore, a bit tired, but that’s to be expected on a warm night. Overall, it was a good test for us.
“We’ve got two massive games coming up, starting with a really difficult game against a Treviso team who’ve been really impressive this season and got a great win in Edinburgh this weekend. We will need to be at our very best if we want to get off to a winning start. It’s important that we get a good crowd behind us and that they are patient and stay with us if things don’t go our way. That’s what every team needs if they want to make a mark in Europe.
“We’ve said all along since the summer that we wanted to be building momentum as we came into October and the Heineken Cup and that’s exactly what we’ve done. Hopefully now we can do ourselves justice these next two weeks.”