In the build up to the Ospreys' BKT URC fixture against the Emirates Lions, Simon Thomas sat down with Sam Parry to discuss his 150th appearance.
Ospreys stalwart Sam Parry is aiming to celebrate a major landmark in his career with a crucial bounce back victory.
The 32-year-old hooker will make his 150th appearance for the region in their must-win meeting with the Lions at the Swansea.comStadium.
Following successive league defeats away to Edinburgh and home to Munster, they have to come out on top in order to keep alive their hopes of making the end of season play-offs.
They are currently down in eleventh, four points adrift of the eighth-placed Lions.
“Obviously it’s nice to have the personal milestone and I look forward to celebrating that,” said the five-cap Parry, who has been with the Ospreys for a decade now.
“But there’s a big job to do against a good Lions team and we definitely need to bounce back and put in a good performance, especially after the Munster loss last week.
“That was a tough one, we were really disappointed with it.
“We lost at home. That’s not something we like to happen often, so there has to be a reaction.
“There have been some honest conversations this week looking at our executions, our skill-sets and bits of the game we didn’t do well. We expect more from ourselves.
“We have to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes and put in a performance we are proud of in front of our fans.
“This is a massive game for us. It’s huge. We do need to win if we want to be in that top eight.
“The defeats have made it difficult, but one thing I would say about this team is we won’t give up until it’s impossible to make it.
“It would have been ideal to win the last two games, but they are gone now. We have to learn very quickly and put in a big performance because this Lions team is very good and they are going to take some beating.”
The visitors from Johannesburg showed their threat with an impressive 38-14 bonus point victory over Connacht in Galway last weekend.
They show just the one change with Conraad van Vuuren coming in at tighthead prop for Asenathi Ntlabakanye who is suspended due to his red card in the west of Ireland.
The Ospreys have Wales Six Nations forwards Adam Beard and Gareth Thomas back on regional duty, while full-back Max Nagy returns on the bench after a lengthy injury lay-off.
