Off Topic Ospreys, Wales & BIL

When was that?

 

I think its here....

Check out @m_brosnan’s Tweet:

 

Thanks - not sure if it was deliberate, but certainly looks near Cawdor's eye.....

 

I'd have liked to have seen Hook at 10 and Biggar at 12.

Crying out for top class wingers and a huge ball carrying centre though.

 

No gouging there?

 

I think I'd rather have Sam at 10 with Biggar at 12 - similar to the way England play Ford & Farrell

 

Good game for the most part and happy to see us play with spirit, although very little skill and creativity, in the first half.

We're a like the Swans right now, good between the 22's but soft in defence and with little if any attack to compensate for our defensive deficiencies.

It just feels like we're a club in crisis right now with the players plodding around with their heads down, playing at only 70% potential. Our back three are usually good at the counter but offered little anywhere on the pitch, other than the boot Bigger looked ponderous and didn't perform at all, just shovelling the ball on all game. Our centres were weak in the tackle and clueless with ball in hand. Webb looked good in part but was like he knew he had nothing outside him to take the ball on. All the talk of his gouging is utter rubbish, there was a scrap and he got the better of his man and that's it.

Our pack was ok for 30 mins but got spanked around the pitch for most of the game which was a huge disappointment for me. I'm used to a bit of intimidation up front but yesterday there was none.

Its like there's been a massive row and the players don't like each other any more, they're just not playing as a unit and my fear is this season is going to be the worst we've ever had.

We've gone stale and its obvious to me that Tandy and co have nothing left to freshen things up. They've sang their song for so long now it has to be time to change the record. Time for Tandy and co to go and time for the board to get up off their comfortable arses and do some leg work.

They've got to go get us a new mean coaching team. Dont care about nationality, colour, sex or creed but ont thing is for sure, the next coach has to carry a punch. The squad as a whole needs someone to instil fear into their comfortable lives and get the juices flowing. Coaches across the bridge have this fear factor that ours have always lacked. Time to go get a pack leader to lead the pack I reckon.

Credit to the Scarlets for not folding in the first half and for comming back in the second to teach us how to play rugby. They stepped it up in the second half and were far more passionate and played with a greater intensity than we did in posession in the first.

The Scarlets showed us exactly what we should have done with all possession we had in the first half by playing an agressive expansive game and scored a hatful of points, remember they missed 11pts worth of kicks. Compare what they did in the second to the way we played unimaginative, fat arse rugby running over and over into a brick wall. The Scarlets easily controlled us and the game all of the second half and didn't just look dangerous with ball in hand, they were dangerous.

Have to thank the Scarlets for leaving us with a bonus point because we didnt earn it. The final score flattered us, it almost made it look like a close game but any one and every one who was there saw it wasn't. The Scarlets kicked our arse.

 

Well said Stumpy - a great, well-balanced summary.

The last couple of years of attempting to live within their means have started to catch-up with the Ospreys. However, despite this, cash is scarce and the next 2 matches are against teams with Budgets approaching double what the Ospreys have.

Yes, compared with the Scarlets & the Blues, the Ospreys have a stronger balance sheet and probably a little more spent on the squad - but it will cost the Scarlets an absolute fortune to retain their existing squad beyond this season - don't they have something like 17 or so players out of contract? They've lost Byrne already....

The Ospreys have shown belief in a Coach before - didn't Lyn lose 10 on the bounce in the early days? - and I suspect that Tandy will be given more time to turn it around.

 

Scarlets are the best team by far and yet the Ospreys have the best individual players and are the bigger side....The difference is the Scarlets have the better coaches and the Ospreys dont.....Tandy and his team of coaches need to be changed and sooner the better....

 

Webb and Biggar have been confirmed as leaving. I fully expect AWJ and Tips to be the next departures to be announced over the coming months.

Then we really are in the $hite.

 

Al is going nowhere, same with Tips.

I fully expect a complete overhaul of the squad come next season.

 

Ospreys aren't going to challenge for any serious trophies for years.

If a French or English club offer enough money they'll be gone. AWJ is coming to the end of his career now where he can command a huge contract.

Tips will probably stay another season and then go.

It's going to take a shed load of money to sort the mess out at the Ospreys. Money we all know they don't have.

 

The French & English clubs have far more cash - and far higher losses. As I've posted previously, Saracens have cumulative losses of c£50m. But they have owners with deep pockets.

So no Champions Cup aspiration - the target is Top 6 in PRO14.

Yes - all the Welsh Regions need to spend more on a squad, but that is just to stay competitive in the PRO14. The days of the Ospreys having Galacticos are gone forever.

 

I'll rephrase that to "The Ospreys haven't challenged and aren't going to challenge for any serious trophies for years".

The only serious trophy is the Heineken Cup (or whatever it is called these days!) and the Ospreys have never challenged for it and are now further away from a challenge than ever.

 

Thing is Taff, when you analyze the squad it's not so bad. We have a squad of decent players who are simply under-performing. Imo this is because they lack leadership and direction in training which translates to below par, lack-luster match day performances.

Like I've said before we are a tidy team but tidy teams don't win cups and titles and right now we're finding it hard to win games let alone silver wear. To beat us, all teams have to do is to slightly up their intensity and shift up a gear because right now, we cant do that as we're stuck in 3rd.

This is down to mind-set imo. Its all about the top two inches which used to be our strength. But, imo, our coaches are not getting the message across anymore. They've been coaching for so long they've become stale imo and the worst thing is the players just on't hear what they have to say anymore.

The team lacks so much now its no wonder we cant win the games we should be. We lack power in the scrums, grunt in the front five, intensity in the back row, guile at half back, creativity at centre and dynamism in the back three. We lack all these things right now and these are the things that should be second nature, learned and instilled in Llandarcy.

We need to take a step back, starting with the 'retraining' of our entire squad because they have forgotten what they once knew. This can only be done after a complete overhaul of our coaching staff imo, because Tandy and Co have lost the ream. Not in a nasty way but because they have been here doing the same ol same ol for years and the players have become deaf to them. I've seen it before in work, once a 'crew' cant hear their 'gaffer' anymore, there's nothing left to do except change the 'gaffer'.

 

Stumpy - On paper, the squad looks decent. However, the move away from the "Galacticos" approach several years ago, to the strategy of developing our own young talent has not - yet - produced the hoped for outcome.

Some youngsters have come through, but the vast majority have not "kicked on". Nicky Smith & Sam Parry appear to have stalled; Rory Thornton is another to have shown immense promise but......

Couple that with seemingly continual injuries to Ashley Beck, Hanno Dirksen & Dafydd Howells means that the pipeline of producing our own players has yet to deliver in full.

Add to that some disappointing signings of experienced players and we have the current poor run.

 

Agree. It's going to get worse under Tandy. He's the Ospreys version of clueless Bob. Way out of his depth and should never have got the job in the first place.

 

With the playing budget available at the Ospreys, it is highly probable that no Coach would be able to deliver the Champions Cup.

 

Bugger the champions cup. No Welsh club will win that with the money of big French, Irish and English clubs.

However, we should be able/expecting a serious pro14 title challenge at least. Under Tandy we are years away from challenging.

 

Valley - we made the Play-Offs last season.

Additionally, Ulster, Munster & Leinster are all better funded by their Union than we are. Not forgetting Glasgow who the SRU have thrown their cash behind.

Not one Welsh Region could realistically afford to pay what Rennie is getting to coach Glasgow......