We welcome Benetton Rugby to St Helen’s, this afternoon, and to one of the iconic sports grounds in Wales and the new home for the Ospreys.
St Helen’s in Swansea has been our new temporary training base due to the pandemic and really has afforded us the opportunity to start a fresh and begin a new era at the Ospreys.
I know how important St Helen’s is to Wales’ sporting landscape and I have spoken before about how symbolic the move to St Helen’s has been for us.
In relation to us, being in the heart of the city in Swansea certainly has its benefits and that means this is probably the only true home game we will get this season and, from that point of view, we know we have to deliver.
All of us are aware of the sporting history of the place and the famous blue plaque to cricket legend Sir Garry Sobers’ six sixes back in 1968 on the wall outside the ground. He could bat a bit.
Then, of course, there is Swansea’s historic victory over the then world champions Australia in 1992 and Scott Gibbs’ famous try. I know Gibbsy personally and he could ride the odd tackle or two.
One of the reasons I came to the Ospreys was to embrace the history and culture that St Helen’s represents. During my playing days my own club, Blackheath, used to play Swansea and Newport but I never had the chance to play at St Helen’s.
My first game, however, was against Aberavon down the road. It was my first venture into Wales as a young man and even back then I instinctively understood, with the friendly hostility in the crowd, how important rugby was to Wales and to the people of Wales.
So there are plenty of symbols about the place to inspire all of us and hopefully we can add our little part to the history.
While we will show Benetton the utmost respect, we all know that this is all about us and how we perform, the importance of improving and embedding the principles that we need to be successful.
We know we need to be more consistent for a longer period of time during games. We finish games very strongly and have started to start games much better than we have done.
So we are seeing those incremental improvements every time we play but we need to be more consistent across the 80-minutes. Our character and commitment are there for all to see, we just need to add consistency of performance and to cut out the error and penalty count in our game.
We have a new and young group of players and it does take time to embed but we know what we need to do. It’s not a mountain we are trying to climb and we just need to do it.
Results are always painful when they don’t go your way but there is no doubt we are making progress.
The team thank you for your continued support.
Toby
This article can be found in our official matchday programme. Click the link below to read our programme in full, with interviews with Mat Protheroe, Dan Lydiate, and a head to head comparison against this afternoon's opponenents.