Booth game plan blows Blues away
NIGEL Owens may have forgotten his cards at Park Y Scarlets, but Ben Whitehouse certainly knew where his were at Cardiff City Stadium.
He brandished four yellows and awarded a penalty try as the Ospreys totally dominated the Blues to notch the best result of Toby Booth’s brief stint in charge. Fair play to his opposite number, John Mulvihill, for accurately assessing the game plan the visitors would bring.
He brandished four yellows and awarded a penalty try as the Ospreys totally dominated the Blues to notch the best result of Toby Booth’s brief stint in charge. Fair play to Booth’s opposite number, John Mulvihill, for accurately assessing the game plan the visitors would bring.
In his prematch Press briefing Mulvihill talked about how much the Ospreys kick, how they like to scrum and how much of a threat their driving maul would be. On the night they kicked better, scrummed stronger and completely outmauled their hosts.
The midweek comments from the Blues’ camp obviously raised the hackles of the Ospreys and by the end they had rubbed the noses of the home team into the dirt.
To be fair to Mulvihill, he lost Jim Botham and Kieron Assiratti in the warm-up and couldn’t have foreseen such an illdisciplined evening’s work from his team. Former Osprey Dmitri Arhip conceded four penalties on his own and a yellow card that led to the penalty try.
“You can’t give away 19 penalties and have three yellow cards and expect to win,” said Mulvihill. “We are averaging around ten penalties per game. Here
we gave away six in the first half and then 13 in the second!
“The intensity wasn’t there from us and if we don’t front up next week against Scarlets it isn’t going to be pretty.”
It couldn’t have been much uglier than this for Mulvihill, who saw a 21st minute lead from a Jason Tovey penalty turned into
a 7-3 interval advantage for the Ospreys after Stephen Myler had kicked back-toback penalties into striking distance of his side’s driving lineout.
Ifan Phillips hit his jumper, as he did all night, and then picked up the try as the Blues were pushed red-faced over their own line. Myler added the extras and the visitors’ confidence simply grew and grew from there.
Not even the loss of Dan Lydiate on the cusp of halftime for leading with his elbow into a tackle on him by Tovey could set them back. By the time he returned the first of the Blues trio of sin-binners, Seb Davies, passed him
going the other way for pulling down a lineout.
Myler then stretched the lead with a penalty before the result was clinched on the hour mark with a penalty try. This time the driving maul was going like an express train towards the home line when Arhip intervened and brought it to ground.
He saw yellow, as did his replacement Scott Andrews soon after for collapsing a scrum, and the Blues were done and dusted.
“The exciting thing for me is that the players were a little bit disappointed that they hadn’t won by more,” said Ospreys head coach Booth.