Danny Wilson has ripped into his Cardiff Blues players – and his own coaching – after their derby night hammering by the Ospreys.
The Blues coach watched his team lose 46-24 at the Liberty Stadium on Friday night, a scoreline that deceivingly suggests the visitors were half as good as the hosts. They weren’t.
The Ospreys scored seven tries, but took their foot off the pedal after five and allowed the Blues to make the result respectable by conceding some soft tries in Cardiff’s tally of four.
But it fooled no-one – least of all Wilson – and it means the Blues have now lost 11 successive times to their big rivals.
Those matches follow a similar pattern. The Blues players spend the week talking up their chances and terms like “payback” and “owe them one” are banded around.
Then the game starts and the gulf in conviction as well as class is made apparent.
Wilson said: “Physically we didn’t turn up tonight, we got manhandled and as a group – coaches included – we’ve got to look at that and say it’s not good enough.”
Blues were Wales’ leading team going into the game, and led 10-3 after a quarter of an hour thanks to Kristian Dacey’s try.
But a yellow card for full-back Dan Fish saw Ospreys score 19 points inside 10 minutes to take complete control and secure a bonus point before half time.
“The yellow card is a catalyst, if you like, but you can’t blame the yellow card for the amount of tackles one-on-one that people missed leading up to what was three tries in that period,” said Wilson.
“It’s physically not the performance we’ve seen this season from the Blues players. They’re a far better group of players than that and we’ll work hard to put it right.
“Maybe it’s a little bit of a reminder of where we are and that we still have a huge amount of work to do.
“We’ve had four good results and a reasonably good performance against Leinster, so there’s definitely something there to build on, but tonight in a derby – the ones that we all talk about as the big games – it’s not acceptable.”
Ospreys coach Steve Tandy, whose side moved to second place in the table, was happy with the way his team bounced back from consecutive defeats away to Leinster and Ulster.
“It’s really pleasing for the boys to get a bonus point win against the high-flying Blues and I think more importantly we backed up last week,” he said.
“We were really disappointed that we didn’t get a result out in Ulster but they have dug in and put in another huge shift and to get five points is really pleasing.
“It was how we kept our speed of ball, how we looked after the tackle contest really well and that allowed us to keep on the front foot and keep working the Blues.”
Ospreys have now won 11 consecutive games against Cardiff Blues and scored 32 tries in their six matches this season.
The only disappointment for the region was a serious looking ankle injury to Canada international wing Jeff Hassler who was taken from the field on a stretcher.
“I don’t think it’s going to be good,” said Tandy. “It’s a big disappointment for us.”
