Steve Tandy couldn't contain his disappointment and frustration following Friday night's defeat to Glasgow at the Liberty Stadium, declaring that the performance wasn't acceptable and that it was "far away from what the supporters deserve"
When he met the press after the final whistle, Tandy was in a straight talking mood as he began his inquest into a 28-10 defeat at the hands of the Scots that made it three losses in three games at the start of the new season.
“It’s fantastic that we’ve got more than 9,000 season ticket holders this year but the product we put on tonight wasn’t the show they deserved” he said.
“We aren’t going to hide away from that fact. The spirit and camaraderie within the group is never in question, but the accuracy and what we delivered on the pitch wasn’t good enough. It’s far away from what the supporters deserve. It was a real disappointing night for us. I thought we turned the ball over too cheaply, conceded really cheap tries, and with the basic errors we made in our game we aren’t going to win games like that.
“I felt last week we were dominant up front in the scrum for large periods and a couple of calls didn’t go our way which we pretty disappointed with but the set-piece didn’t function today. We turned the ball over and we got exactly what we deserved out of the game, which was nothing.
“The first try was just one of those things. We normally compete for those, it was just one of those freak ones but then the others I don’t think we’ve reacted quickly enough. We’ve got ourselves within touching distance of getting back into the game at 18-7 and we just needed a little more maturity in some of the things we did. It’s a really disappointing night, I’m probably the most disappointed I’ve been since I’ve taken charge.
“It was a great end of season but that’s gone, we need to bin that now. We’ve got to start winning games.”
Tandy was asked whether he had any complaints about any of the Glasgow tries, with Van Der Merwe’s opener and a possible block on Dirksen on the minds of the assembled press, but the Ospreys Head Coach, in straight talking mood, was having none of it.
“I think it would be easy for me to sit here and moan but at the end of the day I think we’ve got to put our own house in order before throwing stones anywhere else” insisted Tandy.
“We’ve got to get ourselves right. We spoke about turning the ball over too many times last week, it was 22 times and I’m sure it’ll be in and around the same number tonight if not more. It’s something we really have to focus on. It’s not just that, there are a couple of other areas in the game we’ve got to improve quite quickly.
“If you go over the three games and sum them up, Treviso we probably deserved to win the game with 14 men. We left a lot of points out there. Ulster we were 13-3 up on 60 minutes and there are a couple of big calls that haven’t gone our way but we still should have had enough to see the game off. Tonight just wasn’t good enough. We have mixed the team around, it’s something that we planned to do, and the two selections we made for the first two games, they should have got us home. Tonight we just weren’t good enough and that’s not acceptable. It’s something we’ll be fighting to put right for Friday.
“We’ve got a squad, we’ve seen some decent individual performances and some that simply weren’t good enough. It’s something for us to address as coaches and we’ll be fighting our damnedest to put it right for Friday night.”
The suggestion was put to Tandy that the Scarlets will be rubbing their hands in glee ahead of next weekend’s big derby and would be aiming to really rub the Ospreys noses in it. It was a suggestion he agreed with, saying:
“If I was in their shoes I’d want to do that, wouldn’t you? Some of the spirit we did show in the second half, we did have a lot of field position and territory, but it counts for nothing if we don’t score the points when they are on offer. It’s something we really have to look at. The Scarlets are going to be really keen, they’ve got off to a great start, so it’s important we do ourselves justice there.
“As coaches and players those are the games that you want to be involved in but we’re going to have to put a hell of a lot right to get the kind of performance we need to win down the Scarlets.”