The Welsh region would be full of effort and would go toe-to-toe with their French Top 14 opponents but would perform under their usual high standards seen under Jones in recent months. Their quest for a first European semi-final appearance ending with Lyon just about having enough in the tank to see the game out to progress.
Tries from wing Vincent Rattez gave the visitors the perfect start, before the home side settled into the contest with captain Jac Morgan bulldozering his way over to level the scoreline.
The consistent boot of fly-half Leo Berdeu saw the visitors lead at the break before replacement lock Mickael Guillard regained the French side’s advantage.
Replacement hooker George McGuigan scored through the Ospreys powerful driving maul to set up a grandstand finish but Wales fly-half Dan Edwards, who kicked eight points, on the night, late conversion agonisingly would hit the post with the chance to level the scores.
Still, there were late opportunities to win the game, but Ospreys execution would not be on point which would ultimately be the difference on the day for their coach.
“It’s disappointing because the effort was there, as you would expect, but we definitely dropped below a level of accuracy that we’ve shown over the last few months,” Jones said.
“Some of that was down to Lyon, in fairness, and the pressure they put on us around the contact area, but also a lot of skill-set stuff there that we are a little bit disappointed with.
“We couldn’t build any back-to-back pressure. They are such a physical team and once you get into that front-door game against them, it becomes quite difficult to out-power them.
“The little errors add up at the end and that’s disappointing because a lot of it was in our control.
“We wanted the ball, we wanted to dictate the speed of the game, we wanted to move their big guys around.
“We did move them around, but we just didn’t move them around well enough and accurately enough.
“It is a good lesson for us that the closer you get to the finish line the more accurate you have got to be, and all we can do is learn from it and hopefully we get into future knockout games. We want to build on this one and take the next step forward.”
Lyon will now face Racing 92 in the semi-final, while there will be no Welsh involvement in the two European finals in late May which are being held at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.
[Lead image: Ospreys Rugby]
