By Rob Carbon
The Ospreys were beaten 21-13 by Sales Sharks in their Heineken Champions Cup opener.
Toby Booth’s side warmed up with Ifan Phillips’s name on the back of their shirts after the 25-year-old suffered life-changing injuries in a road traffic accident.
Ospreys head coach Booth said: “It’s been an emotional week, for sure. It wasn’t spoken about as a motivator but, in a perverse way, that performance almost epitomised Ifan as a guy.
10 MINS TO GO ⏰
Lovely touch from @ospreys with a tribute to @ifan_phillips during warm up 🖤
We wish him all the best.#HeinekenChampionsCup pic.twitter.com/Y9q7biyZlY
— Heineken Champions Cup (@ChampionsCup) December 12, 2021
“He’ll be the first to say he’s not the tallest, but he’s plucky and I thought our performance was plucky.
“He always got stuck in and made the best of it.
“I suppose our performance looked a little bit like that.”
Booth’s team were caught cold by Sale’s physicality.
The Sharks’ power game was too much for the Welsh side to handle and Rohan Janse van Rensburg, Ewan Ashman and Jean-Luc du Preez all powered over in the first half.
Owen Watkin and Michael Collins both missed tackles for Van Rensburg’s try.
🖤 Over £1300 raised already for Ifan Phillips
Each warm-up jersey today will be signed by the squad & raffled off with all donations going towards the Crowdfunding page setup for Ifan. Donate here👇
Thank you for all your support
— Ospreys (@ospreys) December 12, 2021
Sale fly-half AJ MacGinty kicked all three conversions with Gareth Anscombe booting an Ospreys penalty.
A yellow card for Lood de Jager before the break for taking out Morgan Morris following repeated Sale maul infringements pointed to future Sharks discipline problems and so it proved.
Sale conceded a total of 18 penalties as they failed to score in the second half.
With England flanker and captain Tom Curry and his twin brother Ben in their back-row, Sale were always going to be a menace at the breakdown, but they kept on conceding penalties.
The Ospreys were much better in the second half and had the dominant scrum, a platform from which they scored when captain Rhys Webb threw a long pass to wing Luke Morgan who dived over in the corner.
Wales fly-half Anscombe was forced off at half-time after failing a head injury assessment and his replacement Josh Thomas kicked the conversion and a penalty.
Toby Booth spoke to the media after this afternoon’s Champions Cup clash at the https://t.co/HsgsTwJv7s Stadium
Watch the full press conference here 👇https://t.co/tOptEerdUv pic.twitter.com/6jT1NJsJIs
— Ospreys (@ospreys) December 12, 2021
Ben Curry was the second Sale player to be sin-binned late on.
But the away side’s defence saw them hold out for the win although Sanderson will know his team can improve significantly from this display.
England scrum-half Raffi Quirke thought he had grabbed a bonus-point try late on after chasing a long kick, but the score was ruled out even though he seemed to have beaten Collins to the ball.
