Parry makes history with Ospreys try treble

THE Ospreys finally kickstarted their season after two drubbings away from home as they took full advantage of an extra man to pick up their first win of the campaign at the Liberty Stadium.

Benetton also came into the game looking for their first win, but their hopes were shattered when back row man Marco Lazzaroni was shown a red card by Irish referee Frank Murphy for a dangerous tackle on outside half Luke Price.

It was almost a carbon copy of the tackle that earned Irish centre Bundi

Aki a red in the win over Samoa earlier in the day. At that stage there was no score, but by the break the Ospreys had plundered three tries and marched into a 17-6 lead.

Two of them came from hooker Sam Parry, while the other was scored by Welsh centre Scott Williams. Two of them featured crucial interventions from replacement wing Hanno Dirksen.

The Ospreys were forced to replace both wings in the first-half, Dirksen coming on for Luke Morgan after eight minutes and Tom Williams taking over from the injured Keelan Giles a quarter-of-an-hour later. In between, Parry crashed over from a driving line-out maul to open the scoring and Ian Keatley replied with two penalties.

Dirksen then made the thrust to the line that created the platform for Parry to spin off the driving maul and score his second try. The wing then showed off his handling skills to put Williams in the clear for the third try after the home side had spun the ball right, left and then back to the right to create the space for a score that this time was converted by Luke Price.

It took the home side only four minutes of the second

half to not only extend their lead, but also pick up their first point of the season, when Parry made it a hattrick of tries from another expert driving line-out. This one started 15 metres out from the Benetton line and the end result wrote the hooker into the record books as the first Osprey forward to score three tries in a match. Benetton kept pushing forward and never allowed the Ospreys to run riot.

In fact, the home side lost two players to the sin bin, Scott Williams for a deliberate knock on and Olly Cracknell for a high tackle, and that allowed the Italians to grab their first try through Antonio Rizzi.

That came four minutes from time and they then picked up another from wing Leonardo Sarto. Rizzi converted both and they went away with a point.