Forwards Coach Chris Gibbes highlighted a lack of accuracy from the Ospreys as being a key contributor to their defeat in Northampton on Saturday evening.
The Ospreys came off second best at Franklin’s Gardens as Wales wing George North crossed the line four times to claim the bonus point win for the Saints, and Gibbes had no complaints with the result against a team that had averaged 42 points and 6 tries in their three home Premiership games to date.
“We knew that it was going to be our biggest test to date and we knew that we were going to need to be accurate, and we weren’t” was his summary at the final whistle.
“We’ll take a fair bit out of it from a learning perspective, about what it means to nail your role under pressure. We let them off the hook a few times and they just kept putting pressure on us.
“We were inaccurate at times, we allowed them to camp in our half and we struggled to get out of there. They kept compounding the pressure on us, and the areas of their game where we knew they were going to be a threat, around the breakdown, they were excellent and, clearly, we weren’t.
“We knew that we needed to be pretty good from minutes one to eighty and we weren’t. I think we’ve got ourselves to blame a wee bit. They are a very good side and they are very, very good at compounding the pressure on as they did, but we’re pretty disappointed.
“It’s what happens next for us is the important thing, it’s about how we regroup. What happens next week against Connacht is the immediate thing but from a Europe perspective it’s Racing at home next and we have to make sure that we take the lessons from this. Do that and we’ve still got a good opportunity.
“We showed in parts of the game that when we hold onto the ball we go forward well and we can put teams under pressure. We made them look good in some aspects. They are a very good side but we are too when we get going well and I thought there were bits out there we did that very well. We just didn’t do it for long enough or at the right moments.
“A little bit of that was the pressure they put us under but it was more about our inaccuracies, just the detail of knowing our roles. We are still alive, we are a good side, we just weren’t tonight. We knew we needed to be, but weren’t. If we can get that bit right, learn from the pressure and what it means to play at this level, at this time of year then we’ve still got a chance.”