It's night of positives and negatives says Ospreys coach.
Jonathan Humphreys was in a reflective mood when he spoke to the media following Friday night’s defeat by Newport Gwent Dragons in the LV= Cup, conceding that there were a number of areas of concern ahead of next week’s game against Leeds Carnegie whilst praising the performance of some of the Ospreys youngsters.
He said:
“It wasn’t the best of evenings. It was always going to be tough, I thought that Dragons were fired up and it was a difficult night for some of the young kids out there tonight. But, it was a valuable experience for them, and the good thing about this competition is that there’s another game next Thursday where they’ll have the chance to come again. It’s not a case of just the one game and the disappear again, we’ve got things to build on after tonight, and a chance for them to get a few games under their belt as a group.
“It’s difficult to put together a side that hasn’t played together, but we’re thankful for these games because we’ve got to pretty important Magners League games in the middle of the Six Nations and the large majority of this side will be playing in those games. With this in mind it was a good exercise and lots of lessons learned. Our discipline was obviously a huge problem out there, we gifted them too many penalties. That’s something we have to address and look at for next week because it’s costing us field position and it’s costing us points.
“It’s great to see these kids out there, we’ve got a very exciting back line that showed a few glimpses of what they can do, we scored a couple of nice tries, but we need to learn a little control. Youth tends to be a little bit impetuous and we didn’t play with any sort of control out there. There’s plenty to work on for next week, but it’s important that we remember the positives, I think that in the front row Ryan Bevington and Ed Shervington showed up well, they can be pleased with themselves, Gareth Owen made some lovely breaks and Tom Prydie also showed the potential that he has, while it was an important night for Ben Lewis and Ian Evans on their road back to full fitness, they will be a lot happier with tonight under their belts.
“Since he’s come back, Adam Jones seems to get better with every game. He was magnificent against Leicester and he was very, very good out there tonight. We didn’t play with any control, we didn’t get our patterns going so it was difficult for Shane to get going. At times like that he tries to barge his way into the game but there wasn’t opportunity for him tonight. He was industrious and he got 80 minutes under his belt, which is what Wales wanted.”