The Welsh international centre missed almost the whole of last season with an injury, but showed in an excellent Ospreys display against last season’s Champions Cup semi-finalists that he is now raring to go for the new campaign.
The Ospreys headed to Welford Road having beaten the Tigers 26-21 at the Liberty Stadium and thumped Belgium 71-0 in their other pre-season arm-up match. This, however, was a much more severe test a week out from the start of the Guinness PRO12 campaign.
“There are a lot of positives that can be taken out of coming to Welford Road and scoring six tries against a pretty strong Leicester outfit. We’ve got a bit to work on at the set piece but, all in all, we are pretty satisfied,” said Ospreys head coach Steve Tandy.
“Leicester made us work pretty hard for our tries, but there were some real good moments around our attack. It was a good spectacle for a pre-season game.
“Over the two games against the Tigers, probably both sides will be pretty pleased with elements, and both coaches will realise there’s a fair bit of work still to do. We would have preferred not to have conceded so many tries and we need to tidy up on some scrum stuff.
“But it was a pretty decent night for us. We were pretty resilient despite the pressure we were under at times, a lot of which was self-imposed. A couple of times they went to the corner and sapped our energy and three of the tries were from our kick-offs, which is pretty disappointing.
“But, all in all, we can be pretty satisfied with our pre-season. We’ve now got a seven day lead-in into Zebre at the Liberty and we’ve got to re-focus, touch-up on the stuff we need to and, hopefully, continue with the positive we have seen.”
First half tries from Tom Habberfield, Dan Evans and Dafydd Howells meant the Ospreys trailed 21-19 at the break. Two tries from Wales wing Eli Walker after the restart, and another from hooker Hugh Gustafson, kept the Welsh region in the hunt throughout a game that saw 12 tries. Sam Davies added four conversions.
“It’s great having Ashley Beck back. You can see from some of his movement, his experience, what he offers,” said Tandy.
“We’ve also got out two Canadians (Tyler Ardron and Jeff Hassler) back. I thought Tyler in particular was really good again tonight and it means we have three boys coming back in who didn’t play much rugby last season.
“It’s also good to have Justin Tipuric involved and proving as influential as ever. It was also pleasing to see to people like Joe Thomas, Keelan Giles and Luke Price coming on at the back end and not look out of place.”
