After a good opening round win against Cardiff, the Ospreys will make the shortest of their away trips over the Loughor Bridge to the PYS to face the Scarlets in Round 2 of the Rainbow Cup. Will Coach Booth ring the changes or will a similar 23 be named?
I think the 23 could look like this:-
N Smith, J Lay, S Parry, I Phillips, T Botha, R Henry, R Davies, A Beard, BBBD, E Roots, M Morris, G Evans, S Cross
M Aubrey, R Webb, J Thomas, S Myler, M Protheroe, K Williams, O Watkin, D Evans, K Giles, J Hawkins.
Discuss.
Well I believe Toby Booth has to take a good look at himself, because after all , he is the one preaching the Gospel about what it means to be an Osprey and what it means to represent the region. Then on the back of a horrendous performance crashing out against Newcastle and all of the regions being slammed by all of the rugby world , he goes and puts out a side that every single Ospreys fan could easily have told him would not be anywhere near competitive enough AND against our nearest and bitterest rivals for goodness sake. I always believed in Toby, but that is nowhere near good enough for the Region, for The Ospreys and for the fans who deserve better. That performance against the Scarlets took me back to the worst days of Clarke when watching was torture. You cannot instil this pride in what the group stands for and then simply give up matches because they are not important in your scheme, because they are damned important to us fans. We dont want to be seen as the pushover region because we have now been outplayed and out thought by The Dragons, Newcastle and a poorly performing Scarlets side . Everything seems like “Coaching Manual Rugby” without flair players or heads up rugby. You could see the panic in the eyes of Luke Price and Cai Evans when they were called upon to field defensive kicks, all of which were pathetic . I don’t believe I have ever been so disappointed watching a match as that one. While we are at it, I am no expert , but why oh why, do scrum halves have to wait around waving their arms in the air at the forwards instead of simply getting the ball away, even the refs are fed up with it, screaming “use it” to try and get the games flowing. It’s all coaching manual stuff in my opinion and players seem to have become automatons. Oh for Gareth Edwards and his dive passes!!!