Jones and co were beaten 29-17 by the inform English outfit at the Liberty Stadium as they saw their hopes of Heineken Cup or Amlin Challenge Cup qualification come to a premature end.
It was a disappointing outcome for the Ospreys given that they had returned to Europe on the back of four straight wins and Jones pulled no punches in his assessment of the Pool 1 clash in Swansea, and of the campaign as a whole.
An opening round loss to Leinster at the Liberty was followed by away reverses at Northampton and Castres, with a win over the French Champions on home soil their only success so far. Victory in France, rather than the narrow 15-9 defeat, might have changed the course of the campaign but instead the Ospreys must now focus on adding to their record-breaking four Celtic Crowns in the PRO12.
“We attempted to throw pretty much everything we had in our armoury at Northampton. But we were our own worst enemies at times,” said Jones.
“It’s difficult when you do that – we probably would have had a decent momentum shift if we had carried it on.
“There are quite a few positives to take from that game, though. I felt we had enough possession in the first half and early on in the second, but it’s about what you do with it as well, isn’t it?
“We probably weren’t competitive in the first two games, if we’re honest. Had we won the Castres game away, that would have been a big turning point for us. They were down to 13 men in the last minute and we had a dubious penalty against us in the end when we felt we could have gone on and won it.
“It’s no more frustrating than any other (European campaigns) we haven’t succeeded in. We’re out of the competition and now we’ve just got to focus on the Rabo.”
Head coach Steve Tandy believes lapses in concentration and a failure to turn pressure into points across the tournament has cost his side dear, with margins for error increasingly small in the continent’s top club competition.
“That sums up our Heineken Cup campaign,” said Tandy. “If you go back to Leinster at home, we had opportunities in the first half to build a lead and we didn’t take them. And now we had that chance here with Tips (Justin Tipuric) at the end of the first half and other opportunities across the whole game.
“Whereas in the Rabo (PRO12) you can make one or two mistakes and still get a win, in the Heineken, if you don’t take that one opportunity where you can go say eight or 10 points up, there are massive shifts in games.
“When you are on top of teams you need to punish them and we didn’t do that against Leinster at home. We hung on in there at Castres and then when we got an opportunity at the end we didn’t take it. If we had have picked up a couple of wins (in those games) then this would have been a totally different game – you could kick your goals and wouldn’t have to go chasing tries.
“The effort and endeavour was there. There’s a lot of good in our game but there are little points where we take our foot off the gas, like when we got back to 22-17 and then our exits were poor, there was poor ball presentation, they got a foot through and we coughed up a cheap try.
“We created some good opportunities and we looked half decent when we had the ball at times but, in this environment and in these games, if you switch off for a second, it’s curtains.”
