Booth rues Ospreys’ lack of consistency after home loss

THE Ospreys came down to earth with a bump as three tries saw Ulster to victory in Swansea.

Toby Booth’s side had been looking to build on their impressive victory on the road against Edinburgh in round one.

But they were unable to reproduce anywhere near the same level of performance against opponents who took charge at forward and had a clear edge behind.

Jacob Stockdale, Marcell Coetzee and John Cooney, the visitors’ three best players, all scored tries, with Cooney supplying nine points with the boot.

The Ospreys could only muster four penalties from Stephen Myler in reply.

Ulster’s evening was marred late in the game when they had skipper Iain Henderson sent off for aiming a shoulder at Dan Evans’ head at a ruck. But they were worthy winners. It was a disappointing effort by the hosts.

Their line-out misfired completely, they made too many mistakes with ball in hand and were predictable in attack.

The effort underlined how much work Booth has to do before the Ospreys can say they’ve turned the corner.

The region’s head coach said: “We couldn’t put Ulster under enough consistent pressure and as a result, if you’re a top side, they are going to have parts of the game when they are going to get on top of you and if you are not resilient you get some of what you saw tonight.

“The disappointing thing is that some of our fundamentals weren’t as consistent as we’d like them to be.

“Part of that is the journey for young players and part of that is we just need to be better.

“We set our own standards and some of those standards we were disappointed with tonight.”

Both sides went into the game with confidence, having won their opening weekend fixtures.

But the Ospreys didn’t play with much self-belief in the opening half and were unable to build momentum.

Ulster weren’t exactly great themselves, struggling to make passes stick and deal with the greasy conditions. But they opened the scoring on eight minutes after the Ospreys conceded a penalty which the visitors planted into touch. There followed a number of powerful drives before the ball was shipped left where Stockdale was able to make it across the line.

There wasn’t much else to get excited about in the opening half.

Passes were dropped, penalties given away and scrums took too long.

It said everything that Ulster celebrated the award of one scrum penalty as if they’d won the World Cup. Cooney actually missed the resultant kick from near halfway.

Within seconds, the Ospreys had retaliated through a second Myler penalty.

But the Welsh team struggled to build anything. They had no-one who threatened like Stockdale, who twice cut through the cover, on the first occasion surging past Rhys Webb and Mat Protheroe as he made his way upfield.

Ulster gained reward for their dominance when No. 8 Coetzee powered over from close range after Henderson had done the initial damage.

The hosts had a dot of encouragement for them when Myler nailed his third penalty.

Minutes later he fired over his fourth, cutting the deficit to four points. But they messed up two successive line-outs, allowing pressure to lift on the visitors. Cooney ran in the final try. There was still time for Henderson to get himself sent off for a shoulder charge towards the head area of Evans.

It made no difference to the final score.