LONG READ The Ospreys are still standing proud and deserve credit for digging in amidst uncertainty

“If Australia were three for 300 you would not expect him to get 20. But if they were three for 50 you could almost write down a hundred for him before we went out to bat. His great innings were always when they were badly needed.”

So reckoned a prominent Australian cricket figure about the prodigious run-accumulator Steve Waugh.

Some wilt when adversity closes in. Others thrive at a mere whiff of the stuff.

The same goes for teams as much as for individuals.

This season, the Ospreys have been assailed by a veritable blizzard of challenges. Playing at a temporary home in Bridgend, they have been operating on a playing budget of just £4.5 million – not so much a shoestring arrangement as a shoeless situation. Until this week, their owners, Y11, were in talks to take over another region, Cardiff, leading many to conclude that the Ospreys’ very existence was under threat amid the structural changes being proposed for the Welsh game.

There’s more. Injury meant their much-admired captain, Jac Morgan, didn’t start a game for them until late March, while his fellow Wales international, Dewi Lake, has seen his campaign cut short by a bump.

Short of the region’s training base in Llandarcy blowing away, it’s hard to imagine a more unpropitious set of circumstances for a team to contend with.

The easy option would have been for the Ospreys’ players and coaches to give up the season as a bad job and let the wave of misery do its worst. To stack the mixed metaphors higher, it would have been simple just to lob the towel into the ring.

But the south-west Wales region have always been better than that: much better. In the face of so many challenges, they have continued to bristle with resilience. Rewind to the late 1990s, and the region’s first captain, Scott Gibbs, would lead his Swansea team onto the field at St Helen’s to the strains of Chumbawamba’s pop-rock anthem Tubthumping – sample lyrics: “I get knocked down/ But I get up again/ You’re never gonna keep me down.” Such words might be the tagline for the Ospreys’ in 2025-26, with plural pronouns tossed into the mix instead of singular ones.

Their win over the Sharks last weekend wasn’t without controversy, what with Luke Morgan’s much-debated challenge on Ethan Hooker and the fun and games that saw uncontested scrums over the final quarter of an hour or so.

But to focus solely on those matters would be to do a grave disservice to the home team’s effort in Bridgend.

The challenge was formidable. The South African province’s forwards looked as if they had been washing down their meals with buckets of Miracle-Gro

The challenge was formidable. The South African province’s forwards looked as if they had been washing down their meals with buckets of Miracle-Gro: all but one of their back-five were the kind of folk who could change the bulb in a lamppost without need of steps, with lock Jason Jenkins the most imposing of the lot at 6ft 8in and a couple of barbecued steaks shy of 20st.

There were also some serious heavyweights in the front row, even before Messrs Ox Nche and Vincent Koch took the field. Possibly, some in the crowd would have been thinking the only way to send the visitors packing was to shell them for a couple of days and then send in the infantry.

But it didn’t come to that.

Inspired by Jac Morgan, the Ospreys had enough about them to prevail. They may have conceded three tries but more often than not their defence snapped shut like a mastiff’s jaws.

The consistently impressive Australian lock Ryan Smith led the way with 18 tackles, while Sam Parry chipped in with 15. In the back row, Morgan and Morgan Morris shared 24 hits between them.

The Ospreys declined to buckle and in the process again underlined just how far heart and desire, leavened with no little skill, can take a side.

What more can be said about Captain Jac? In the run-up to the game with the Sharks, he received the devastating news that his cousin and “best friend” Harri Morgan, Brynamman’s vice-captain, had passed away suddenly.

The Ospreys’ skipper could have made himself unavailable, citing the tragic circumstances, and everyone would have understood. But he took the field and went on to play the house down, later saying on social media: “I played my game in honour and memory of Harri. It felt important to go out there and make him proud, playing the game that he loved.”

His man-of-the-match effort featured power hits and defence-scattering carries, while his work at the breakdown was on a different level. When he drove back half of Durban at one ruck – turning over possession for the Ospreys in the process – it was a moment that would have lifted all around him. Try as they might, the Sharks couldn’t find the kryptonite to deal with the chap who is as mild-mannered as they come off the field.

“I didn’t know Jac at all until coming into the environment here,” said Ospreys head coach Mark Jones afterwards. “Obviously, I had seen him playing and the quality of the player was there for everybody to see. But what I have been equally impressed with since working with him is the quality of the character and of the person. He is such a humble guy. He is so understated in everything he does, other than playing the game.”

Indeed. Anyone attempting to come up with an identikit for the perfect Ospreys player wouldn’t have to look far beyond Morgan. Modest, polite, selfless and hard-working, he embodies how those in his area like to see themselves. Should Brynamman ever make a unilateral declaration of independence, there would be only one man for the UN ambassador job.

But he and Lake are leaving for Gloucester in the summer and the departures can only be described as heavy blows for the Ospreys.

That said, they will hope their resilience will help them cope. They are fortunate to have another exceptional openside in Harri Deaves, while at hooker, they have depth with the likes of Parry, Lewis Lloyd and Efan Daniel.

Mark Jones’s team certainly coped against the Sharks, albeit not all of a South African persuasion were moved to applaud.

Facing a social-media firing squad was Luke Morgan after his contentious contact with a diving Ethan Hooker left the South African with a nasty injury, with the hostile reactions ranging from ‘disgusting’ to ‘pure filth’.  One person even called for Jones himself to be sacked for having the temerity to speak up on behalf of Morgan, who insists he was trying to dislodge the ball.

A barrister for the Ospreys wing might argue that while the incident didn’t look great, his client was chasing Hooker at top speed and felt there was a chance of knocking the ball from the South African’s grasp – a slim chance, maybe, but a chance all the same. Our learned friend might also mention that judgments of players in such high-octane moments can sometimes  veer to the imprecise.

 Anyway, Jones wasn’t in any mood to bow to those lining up to berate his wing, calling the criticism of him and his family ‘a disgrace’.  “Luke Morgan is a competitive guy,” he said. “ He’s chasing back as hard as he can for his team in what was a tight game. He’s done his absolute utmost to do what we ask players to do, which is not give up until the ball is grounded. Ethan Hooker is a great player and unfortunately he got injured in that incident, but there’s no malice in that challenge.”

My guess is Jones is right on the malice point. This writer hasn’t interviewed Morgan for a while, but when I did speak with him he seemed as far removed from the type who’d try to deliberately injure a fellow professional as it was possible to be.

Still, you know such words won’t convince all, even if reports at the time of writing suggested the URC would be taking no action against Morgan.

The uncontested scrums issue did cost the Sharks, but the Ospreys were adamant the injuries that left them short of fit props were genuine. You would still have assumed the star-studded South Africans would have been able to overcome opponents who were down to 14 men for much of the final quarter. Quite why they didn’t might be a question they should have spent much time asking themselves since the game at the Electric Brewery Field.

Whatever, can we all agree that Mark Jones has done a fine job at the Ospreys? While they might not make the URC playoffs, they have shown immense spirit and secured a number of outstanding wins which have defied the logic of their circumstances.

Some coaches would have been content just to hold matters together amid the turmoil in the Welsh game. But the man affectionately known as ‘Boycie’ has done more than that. In a five-alarm season for the Ospreys, he has been the coach the region have needed – providing calm and reassuring leadership amid all the uncertainty.

Of course, the culture was hard-wired into the place when he arrived. But he has tapped into the DNA and given supporters something to get behind. That the Ospreys have retained their reputation for being difficult to beat has been some achievement.

Yet long term they still face an existential threat, with the WRU reaffirming just days ago they see a three-team future for Welsh rugby at professional level, with the Ospreys and Scarlets potentially imperilled if only one side survives in the west.

Unsurprisingly, those who see their blood as black find it hard to fathom how the game on the western side of the River Severn could contemplate doing away with a region built on foundations laid down by the likes of Alun Wyn Jones, Filo Tiatia, Duncan Jones, Justin Tipuric, Lyn Jones, Sean Holley and enriched today by Jac Morgan, Lake, Mark Jones and others.

And the Scarlets, of course, could argue much the same from a west Wales standpoint.

The truth is both regions have done a huge amount for the Welsh game since the inception of regional rugby and culling either (or both if a new entity is set up) would be a call that would have ramifications for generations.

Maybe it won’t come to that.

With their owners no longer in the mix to take over Cardiff, the Ospreys have been given a dot of relief these past few days.

Really, it’s the least that their efforts on the pitch for much of this season have deserved.