He may have been at the forefront of Saturday’s win over Munster with 21 points alongside his name, but Sam Davies has hailed the clinical nature of the team effort that saw the Ospreys through.
The 21-year old’s impressive haul helped guide the region to a crucial win after a disappointing run of results that had seen them fail to win in their last three PRO12 games and fall out of the play-off spots going into Saturday’s game against the new leaders.
Reflecting on the win with members of the press after the game, the youngster was in no doubt what the magic ingredient had been.
“We talked a lot about attention to detail in the week and I think we all know that as a squad, when we get that right, as we showed in the first half, we can really put teams to the sword” he said.
“That’s what we did in the first half, but in the second we maybe weren’t as clinical, and lost the ball a couple of times. In the first half we only gave one penalty away, which was a great effort on our part. I think the coaches are going to be happy with that.
“It was a really good call from Tips when they went down to 14, to take full advantage of that scenario from the penalty. We went for the corner and ended up scoring. That’s good captaincy from Tipuric and a good show from the boys to stick to what we’ve trained in that scenario and get that try.”
His personal tally of 21 points, from six penalties and a drop goal to round of the first half and send the team in 17-0 ahead, was one of the key aspects of the game, but Davies was not taking any credit:
“I really enjoyed it. To go back to what I said, that’s what everyone paying attention to the detail of what we train in the week gives me. Just to have the opportunity to kick at goal is great from my point of view and I really enjoy scoring points for the Ospreys, that’s just the way I want it to carry on.
“We spoke in the week about this kind of being our cup final, and that’s the same for every game from now. It’s just about building on this performance now, and when Zebre come here in a few weeks time it’s about putting in another performance then as well.
“We’ve been playing well in the last couple of games but, as I spoke about attention to detail earlier, we’ve been missing little things. That first half from us was a really clinical performance, everything we’ve worked on in the week was shown out there, and I think that’s what we needed in those last two games.
“There were a couple of errors against Leinster, discipline errors against Glasgow, and, today, we cut those errors out, the discipline and handling errors, and really took the game to Munster.
“Coming up against a team who is in this race as well, we really needed to take the points, and stop them getting anything, which we did. “