After a tough afternoon at Stade Ernest Wallon, Ospreys veteran Ryan Jones has vowed that the team will fight to the end to keep their European campaign alive.
Despite defeat at the hands of Toulouse there was plenty for Ospreylians to be proud of and Jones insists that the positive performance from a team featuring so many players enjoying their first taste of Heineken Cup rugby is a good sign for the return fixture at the Liberty Stadium next Saturday (KO 1.35pm), and for the final two rounds in January.
Speaking straight after the final whistle he said:
“We’ve come to one of the toughest places in European rugby, to play against a team that have shown themselves to be real contenders once again, and we gave a performance that we can be proud of.
“We are a relatively inexperienced team but we’ve had a damn good go though. We didn’t have the best of starts and that meant we were on the back foot from very early on but we dug in and kept on going.
“We had a really good spell at the end of the first half but it was the only real possession we had all game. We knew we could be dangerous with the ball in the right areas, but we’ve come out in the second half and failed to get that territory and possession.
“Playing against a team like this, who made the changes at the right time, you can’t live on the edge all the way through, you are going to concede eventually. They wore us down, you can’t defend for 40 minutes.
“Listen, it is what it is but we’ve got another go next week back at our place where we’ll have another crack at them. It may have been a young team out there but this is an incredibly proud bunch of players, we know what we are about and are proud to pull on the Ospreylian jersey. It means everything to the team, to our supporters, and we want to represent the shirt properly in these last three games.
“Toulouse up next week, then Leicester home and Treviso away. Three difficult fixtures, but you know that with any Ospreys team you will get nothing less than 100 per cent and there’ll be nothing left out on the field. It’s going to be tough to progress now, either in this competition or the Amlin, but we will give everything for the cause.”