Holley's Ospreys ready to spread wings and fly
Ospreys coach Sean Holley believes his team have matured and are ready to face the Leinster challenge.
What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, the Ospreys shipped 79 points on two chastening weekends in Thomond Park to sunder their respective Magners League and Heineken Cup dreams.
When coach Sean Holley emerged to face a typically abrasive grilling from his Welsh media f(r)iends, he couldn't help but acknowledge where his side ranked in terms of culture and organisation.
Hadn't he just witnessed it through the prism of red jerseys? "I just think we have got a lot to learn in terms of our culture, our values, our support," he agreed. "We're still quite young and developing as an entity. There's no excuse there. We just need to learn from this."
He anointed Munster as champions, but we all know what happened next; Leinster ultimately triumphed and now they are the Irish unit brimming with stout cultural values threatening to forever prevent the Ospreys from taking flight.
Their forwards coach Jonathan Humphreys was more damning after the crushing 42-9 Heineken Cup defeat to Munster: "When they live the values and culture that others talk freely about and don't live, it's a lesson to us," he said.
They've spent the past year learning. A year on from their humiliation at the hands of Munster, the Ospreys may have once more failed to crack Europe but, more significantly, a return visit to Limerick has offered succour to what is essentially a seven-year-old project.
The Welsh region seemingly synonymous with big hair -- hence the nickname Hairsprays -- big pay packets and big egos have impressed everyone with their resounding response to their narrow defeat in this season's Heineken Cup quarter-final in Biarritz, a needless loss that matched their typecasting as gloriously extravagant losers.
Including that draining defeat in the Basque country, they were forced to play three games in a week -- the latter two in Ireland. A thumping win against Ulster and a wonderful bonus point in defeat against Leinster renewed their focus on ensuring they extracted something from the season.
They'll be forever thankful to Eyjafjallajokull, our unpronounceable spewing Icelandic friend.
They couldn't fly to Belfast, so the squad caught the ferry and then took a train to Dublin before finally returning home a week later.
We didn't have to wait for the dust to settle to discover that the Ospreys had become a more hardened outfit.
A week later, they visited Thomond Park, although rarely Munster's 22. That they snatched a 15-11 victory, in almost Munster-like fashion, demonstrated the length of road travelled since their meek submission in 2009.
"Winning at Thomond Park was always going to be a huge statement and hopefully a turning point for us," according to hirsute prop Adam Jones.
"Obviously it was another disappointment for us in Europe this year, but there has been a lot of progress nonetheless. It would be great to have something to show for that at the end of the campaign."
Holley is even more informed of the inculcation of the necessary values required to compete regularly at the top table.
"I think that couple of weeks was the result of seven years worth of hard work," he explains. "I really do think it's been a defining moment in the Ospreys' short history, and this is the group of players that can push on."
They have grown up. The growing pains have been plentiful. Where once the clumsy amalgam of erstwhile deathly rivals Neath, a proud but distant valley, and Swansea, a rugged port city, was proclaimed in their title, the current Ospreys have discarded their geographical baggage. But they remain encumbered by stifling expectations.
For all the sticks and stones tossed their way, they won two Celtic League titles and an Anglo-Welsh title between 2005 to 2008 and, in essence, back-boned the all-singing, all-dancing Welsh Grand Slam success two seasons ago.
Paul Thorburn, he of the impossibly long penalty kick against Scotland 24 years ago, is now the club's commercial head honcho and he emphasises the often unfair barracking of his region by gently probing just how Leinster and Munster managed in their first seven years of operation.
His is a decent point. Leinster, cocooned within Dublin 4 in a ramshackle HQ, limped over the line to win a Celtic League in 2002 and never threatened European expansion. And Munster's now fabled European odyssey had not yet become a part of Irish folklore; it would be 2006 before they ascended the winners' podium.
"So some people say we've failed in Europe," says Thorburn, "whereas I deem it to be an encouraging factor that we've managed to reach the last eight in three successive seasons while competing well in a domestic competition that is at its strongest level."
myths
Elite Performance Director Andrew Hore is a tad more direct. "There are so many myths about the Ospreys it is unbelievable," says the Kiwi.
"We played Clermont and they were operating with a massive budget, with a side that contained stars from all around the world.
"By contrast, we are trying to develop locally and from within, with a few carefully selected overseas players to play alongside the Welsh boys. The perception that we are galacticos and big-spending Ospreys isn't actually representative of the kids here.
"We have some incredibly grounded boys who don't live lives of galacticos, people like Duncan Jones, Adam Jones, Richard Hibbard and Andrew Bishop. Duncan's from Blaengwynfi, Adam's from Abercrave, while James Hook came through with Corus.
"There are some individuals who have been seen as the glamour boys of Welsh rugby, but that's not a bad thing, either. It's about having a mix, a balance. Most of our squad don't do the glitz, yet everyone is tarred with the same brush.
"As a side we have a pretty tough core. There are Grand Slam winners in there, people who have won Celtic titles and an Anglo-Welsh Cup. You don't lift those trophies by not having something about you."
Leinster coach Michael Cheika has spoken of leaving a legacy, one similar to that of Munster, when he departs. The Ospreys are currently discovering just how difficult it is to construct such an edifice.
"People put false labels on us," says captain Ryan Jones, eerily echoing what in the past a chippy Munster or Leinster player may have said as they endured their emergent maturation.
"People talk about us not cracking Europe yet, but don't forget that it took Leinster 14 years, and we have only been in existence for half that time."
Like the bird of prey from which they take their name, they arrive in Dublin swooping to conquer.
- David Kelly
Irish Independent
