Ospreys have the talent to pull off a big surprise
SHANE WILLIAMS
I HOPE the Ospreys of 2023 have learned the lessons of their predecessors of 2008 ahead of their Heineken Champions Cup clash with Saracens today. Fifteen years ago I was part of a team that thought it merely had to turn up at Vicarage Road to win and progress to the semi-finals. How wrong we were. Two weeks earlier we had spanked Saracens in the semi-finals of the Anglo-Welsh Cup. We felt invincible, but we were naive.
We hadn't paid our dues in the then Heineken Cup and we came a cropper. It remains one of the most disappointing days in my career, worse even than losing to Biarritz in San Sebastien a few years later. That was supposed to be our moment and we let ourselves and the region down through out attitude. We expected things to happen for us, and they didn't. Things went wrong right from the start and we failed to identify our own misgivings – a 19-10 defeat was the least we deserved!
I remember James Hook trying to catch the ball behind his back; Lee Byrne getting a needless yellow card; all of us simply floundering at the end in the face of a combined and determined team effort from Saracens. They had learned their lessons under Alan Gaffney from their heavy defeat to us at Principality Stadium. They were hurting and determined to put things straight. They did to us what we thought we were going to do to them.
So, when Justin Tipuric leads out the current Ospreys side at the StoneX Stadium today against the ‘Men in Black' he must guard against complacency and arrogance. They face an uphill struggle once again against the top team in England to date this season, but can at least travel with the knowledge they have beaten the reigning French and English champions, Montpellier and Leicester Tigers, on their own patch already this season.
They really do have a puncher's chance of completing an incredible treble to set up a quarter-final. Back in 2008, Europe was still a great adventure and it is one of the few tournaments in which the Ospreys have yet to conquer.
It was great to see the Scarlets get past Brive in the Round of 16 in the EPCR Challenge Cup on Friday night. They will now host ASM Clermont Auvergne in the quarter-finals, once again at Parc Y Scarlets. That gives them a great chance to match what Cardiff Blues have already done twice and pick up a major European trophy. The great shame is that in 20 years of regional rugby in Wales, none of the four professional teams has reached the final of the Heineken Champions Cup. We've won our fair share of Grand Slams, Triple Crowns and Six Nations titles, and reached two World Cup semi-finals on the international stage, but when it comes to the top tier of European club action we've been a disaster.
The standards displayed by the likes of Leicester Tigers, Munster, Toulouse and Leinster over decades in the Heineken Cup and then the Champions Cup have set the tone for their national sides. They always turn up and go deep into the tournament. They embrace the challenge and understand what it means, and more importantly what it takes, to be both consistent and successful at that level.
If the Ospreys could cast aside their underdog tag today and pull off another amazing victory then it would be a real feather in the cap of the regional game in Wales. They are not just doing it for ‘Ospreylia' they are doing it for the whole of Wales!
With a high possibility of no Welsh teams going through to the knock-out stages of the URC competition for the second season in a row, Europe is the final frontier, the only chance of grabbing some silverware.
To get a result at the StoneX, Tipuric, right, and his team will have to turn up and be as dogged, determined and physical as they were in Montpellier and Leicester. They will be missing Jac Morgan, but in No.8 Morgan Morris have a player who could turn out to be the key character on the day. He has been superb all season and I was very surprised Warren Gatland didn't include him in his Six Nations squad. A senior Wales jersey surely beckons for him in the future and a good showing against the mighty Billy Vunipola today could be the final act in convincing the national coach he is ready.
It is going to take another almighty effort up front to win the game for the Ospreys, but they have the personnel and the tools, as they have already shown this season. What is required at this level is the belief, tactical nous and will to win to progress. They don't just need an 80-minute display, they need a performance that is borne out of all the hard graft and team work they have put in together over the whole course of the season.
The news on Friday of a final outbreak of peace between the WRU and the four regions, and the signing of a six-year financial commitment between them, will have given all the players an added degree of security in these troubled times. They can look ahead to a future in the professional game, but it will be so much brighter if they can pull off a win today. There will be no room for faint hearts, second thoughts or any Doubting Thomases. It is one for all and all for one! That's what we failed to grasp back in 2008. We had our trousers taken down and out bottoms spanked. It was embarrassing. It mustn't happen again – unless it is in reverse…
