Second half performance pleases Tandy

After watching the Ospreys run in 27 unanswered points in the second half to secure a comfortable win at the Cardiff City Stadium on Saturday night, Steve Tandy said that the result was a fair reflection of his team's second half dominance.

A stop-start first 40 minutes saw the Ospreys go in trailing 12-6, but they kicked through the gears after the restart and as Tandy told the press minutes after the game had finished, the team got their just rewards.

All three tries came from forwards, with the upper hand in the scrum proving crucial, and Tandy said he had been pleased by what he saw:

“It was a terrific effort, particularly in the second half. First half, the ball-in-play time was only twelve and a half minutes, which is frustrating for coaches, players and supporters alike. It was stop-start, we wanted to get a bit of tempo in the game but found it difficult.

“In the second half, we imposed ourselves, kept the ball for large periods, and did pressure the Blues, ultimately getting the tries we needed. Something we wanted to do coming up here was impose ourselves on the game. It wasn’t about what the Blues do it was about us. That’s what we can control and that’s what we focus on, the areas that we can have an influence on.

“At half-time, the message was about being patient. There were frustrations throughout the group and that’s not just the team, that’s management as well. I felt that we didn’t help ourselves. Like I said, I wanted us to be more direct in the way we played and for us to take more control of the ball when we had possession. I think we did that second half and we got the result we deserved in the end.

“We had last weekend off and I think you could see that we took a little while to get going, we didn’t really pick up from where we’d finished so positively against Treviso. But credit to the team for the way they stuck at the task, didn’t allow their frustrations from the first half to put them off and went on to secure a very good win. I think all the Ospreys fans who were here today and really backed the team will go home happy with what they’ve seen from the boys.”

With just two games of the regular season to go the Ospreys remain in second, well placed for a home semi-final but Tandy, as you’d expect, is taking nothing for granted.

“Two wins will get us a home semi but it isn’t that simple” he stressed.

“We’ve worked week on week, we haven’t got ahead of ourselves and that’s what we’ll continue doing. I watched the Dragons last night and they played some good stuff so it’s going to be a tough ask for us, but we are confident about going about our own business.

“The boys have been great. I can’t emphasis enough how good they’ve been over the last five or six weeks. They work their socks off in training and everyone’s bought into what we’re trying to do, which is really positive for us as coaching staff. Hopefully we can back this up in our next game at the Liberty against the Dragons and say farewell to Shane, a real legend. Hopefully we can give him a real send off.

“We’ve put some good performances in so we’ll go into the Dragons game confident but we know it’ll be difficult. It’ll be recovery for the boys the next few days then it’ll be get ready to go on Friday and hopefully we can nail down the semi-final spot then push for the home semi.”