After watching the Ospreys suffer defeat in a rain soaked northern Italy on Friday evening, Forwards Coach Jonathan Humphreys said that lack of discipline and poor execution had proven costly.
Forced to play the majority of the match a man short after Ian Evans was sent off following two first half yellow cards, the Ospreys never gave up the task and the effort and spirit on display pleased Humphreys, even if the overall performance didn’t.
Speaking after the final whistle, he commented:
“We’re very disappointed tonight, with the first half in particular. Our discipline let us down and we went out there and did everything we’d said pre-match that we wouldn’t do, allowing them to build a lead with three, six, nine points. We were well aware that it was going to be tough but when you aren’t at your best and are lacking discipline then you make life very difficult for yourself and that was definitely the case tonight. They made us pay dearly.
“We were a lot better in the second half. It’s fair to say we were the dominant team and created the better opportunities, but for a number of reasons we didn’t put them away and finish the game off.
“We can take some positives out of it. You can’t fault the spirit and the effort that was shown, to keep on going against very physical opponents a man light, that was pleasing. Also, to create the opportunities we did in the second half shows that we had the right intention but our execution left something to be desired and we’ll have to look at that. On another day we’d have taken one of those chances and be talking about a win, but that isn’t any comfort for us.
“We wanted to get off to a winning start and we haven’t done that. We know that we came up short tonight and we’ve got to work hard over the next seven days to make sure we perform better against Ulster at the Liberty Stadium in front of our own fans next weekend.”