Mark Jones says the Ospreys “just weren’t good enough” in the 26-0 derby defeat to Cardiff at St Helen’s. He now wants to talk to the officials about the penalty count before Leinster come to town.
The Ospreys head coach said his side had “something like 14 or 15 entries to their six”, adding: “They converted four of them and we converted none. So, we’ve got to look at ourselves around that.”
Jones: lack of accuracy, not effort, as Cardiff win the breakdown
Jones credited Cardiff for their urgency and physicality at the breakdown, where they shut down what had worked for the Ospreys over the previous few weeks.
He said: “I don’t know if there was a huge lack of effort. I thought there was a huge lack of accuracy in what we were doing, whether it was ball within a line-out, whether it was our skill set, the quality of our passing.”
Cardiff led 19-0 at the break, and Jones said the second half was “much, much better”.
He added: “We got it away from their jacklers, we got into space more, we offloaded more. We just weren’t able to do it well enough and often enough.”
Jones said being held up on the line had only fed Cardiff’s belief. “You convert one of them, or two of them, you get some momentum and all of a sudden the scoreboard starts ticking,” he said.
Jones to speak to the officials before Leinster
Jones said the Ospreys would look again at the penalty count, admitting players and coaches “certainly weren’t seeing it like the referee”, Ben Breakspear.
Asked about the frustration his players showed on the field, he said: “Yeah, you’ve got to adapt, that’s what it’s all about. It’s difficult sometimes when perhaps what you’re used to seeing and what’s happening is different, but ultimately, you’ve got to be able to adapt.”
He added: “I’ll be keen to speak to the officials there and find out where we can be better for our next game against Leinster. Discipline has a huge impact on the results of games and where the game is played and the momentum in games.”
A month to wait as the URC breaks for the Nations Championship
The defeat ended the first block of the season, a week after the Ospreys christened the rebuilt St Helen’s with a bonus-point win over the Dragons.
The URC now stops for five weeks for the Nations Championship, and Jones admitted the wait would sting.
He said: “We’d go and play probably now if we could, but it’s no good now. We’ve had the time to do our talking and our business and we didn’t nail it, so we’re going to have to wait for a month now.”
But Jones said the break would do his squad good, with staff and players “going at it since early June”.
He said: “It’ll be good for us to have a little bit of time apart from each other for a week, ten days, and then come back together, good energy in the building, watch the Welsh lads go for it now in the autumn. Hopefully, we will see those guys get stuck into their fixtures and get excited then for the champs to come into town.”
‘We’ve just got to wear it and just own it’
Jones said he would not “drag anybody over the coals”, but wanted every player to ask whether they had done everything they could in the preparation.
He said he felt for the supporters, adding: “I know they would have loved to have had another victory here, but we didn’t play well enough to give them that.”
Jones said: “We just weren’t good enough, it’s as simple as that, and we’ve just got to wear it and just own it, and do the work.”
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