So the Ospreys have made the daunting trip to South Africa to face the Emirates Lions at Emirates Airlines Park this coming Friday.
George North has not travelled and some of the Welsh lads are not flying out until Thursday apparently. This makes squad and team selection guessing somewhat easier as I will just discount the Wales lads and I expect them to feature against the Stormers the following week.
I think our run on team will be something like this...
N Smith S Parry T Botha BBBD R Davies D Lydiate M Morris E Roots
R Webb S Myler K Giles K Williams M Collins L Morgan M Protheroe
Reps
R Jones S Baldwin R Henry W Griffiths H Deaves
RMW J Thomas M Nagy
Discuss.
https://www.theospreyliantrust.co.uk/post/monday-morning-quarterback-view-37
Make no mistake, we really are in a fight for our survival, particularly with the fallout that is to come from the six nations. There will be plenty of people happy to see us gone. Booths continual selection of certain players is doing us a massive disservice and possibly starting to put nails into our coffin. I’m sorry if this sounds overdramatic, but he has to stop hamstringing us with his continual team selections.
If he truly believes that he is picking the strongest players, then I’m sorry, but he needs to leave before the final nail is hammered.
We are such a poor team though….and I am getting fed up with Booth trotting out the line” we are a young team , everybody knows that, and we are learning blah blah “ Webb, Myler, Davies, Lydiate, Evans , AWJ, these fellas remember rationing.
Don’t you ever get fed up of coaches saying “ we didn’t do this or we didn’t do that right today”
Welsh regions are the equivalent of cannon fodder . Surely there has to come a day when we start to improve. We have been seeing performances like this for the past 6 seasons at least. When will it ever get better. After all it’s still 15 v 15.
The contrast in styles of play and attitude was frightening and that was the weakest SA team. They were fast and aggressive competed at the breakdown and there was always a support runner. Their first instinct is to attack and keep the ball alive in comparison we send one up runners and crab across field. It's hard to play at altitude and perhaps twenty years ago we could say we were not used to hard pitches but with the arrival of 3 and 4 G pitches that is no longer an excuse. We do not have the instinctive players especially at centre so we never create any space for the wings. Even with the return of our internationals next week looks very concerning.
Same old, same old.
Nobody should be shocked. As soon as we picked that team, the only question was 40 or 50 conceded.
TERRIBLE - I'm off to have tea,
Yet another try for the Lions. 45-15 still time for a 50 pointer
It gets worse - TRY Lions. Our 11 and 15 CANNOT DEFEND!!!!
Try Lions - you have to laugh.33-15
Try Ospreys - Collins with the interception. 28-15
Two different philosophies at play here - one is exciting, open and expansive and the other is the Ospreys.
Comms said that our tackle rate was around 90% but in this game it is probably closer to 50% as we have missed so many first up tackles.
Superb Lions try and the BP 28-10.
Whoever thought that no time at altitude was a good idea needs a bollocking.
Try Ospreys - Webb
Try Lions 21-3
Try Lions 14-3
Penalty goal Josh Thomas 7-3 Lions after 30.
Nobody on a shoulder when we make a break and look for the offload.
We seem to run out of ideas after a couple of phases.