Jonathan Humphreys has praised the Ospreys for the way they saw off the Viadana challenge on Saturday afternoon, but has warned the team that they need to prepare for a difficult afternoon next Saturday in the return match at the Liberty Stadium
Speaking after the match, he said:
“I think it has to be a case of job well done today. Coming out here was always a potential banana-skin. Viadana performed very well against Clermont Auvergne and Leicester in their first two games so we knew it was going to be difficult. We wanted the team to take a professional approach and we wanted to be technically precise. Take away the first twenty minutes and we played some good stuff so I’m delighted with the outcome.
“We were obviously happy to come in at half time four tries to the good, and with the bonus point in the bag. It’s difficult in the circumstances to maintain that kind of performance in the second half, but again, in large parts of the half I thought we were pretty good.
“We’ve been working on trying to create a style of play that is noticeably ours, and to get the balance right, and I thought at times there were little snapshots of that. These boys like to run with the ball, they like to offload and it’s great when they do it with accuracy.
“There was a very good balance to our attack. We didn’t feel that we would get what we wanted by getting drawn into a set-piece battle so we wanted to play, and that’s where Dan Biggar and Ricky Januarie came into their own, they gave us the balance that allowed us to attack with purpose.
“There were a few things where you could see that he’d only had a run through with us, but as a professional, I thought Ricky was excellent. We sent a lot of information over to him to enable him to get up to speed and he has obviously been diligent enough to do that. We’re delighted with his performance.
“I thought Dan was very good as well, his kicking today was tremendous, to be able to come in with a 100per cent record is a tribute to his maturity. He is a young man with a very old head and he is fast becoming the glue that holds this team together. Saying that though, there were a number of other outstanding performers this afternoon, it was an excellent team performance on the whole.
“There are some areas from the game today that we feel that we need to address this week, that will give us a platform to push on in the competition next week, to maintain the momentum we have built up to this point.
“We were very happy with our performance against Munster last week, particularly in the second half. Our game is starting to come together and it was important that we continued that improvement here. I think that we can go home very satisfied overall, but we have to do it all over again next week. We saw that they have an excellent spirit, they kept on going to the end and they can cause any side problems, like they did at times today. We know that we have to be diligent this week, prepare for next Saturday’s game properly, put the effort in and get it right on the day to ensure that the hard work here this afternoon isn’t wasted. It won’t be an easy game regardless of today’s result, that’s one thing we can guarantee.”