Come Out And Play Challenge from Ospreys Coach.

Often described as ‘colourful’ and never less than entertaining, Ospreys coach, Lyn Jones, is always good for a sound byte and his latest plea obviously comes straight from the heart and will music to the ears of Magners League chiefs.

“We have great respect for Munster,”  he says on the Ospreys website, ” and hope they will come to the Liberty with an intent to play rugby and we should then see a game worthy of the Magners League.”

It would appear that Jones was not impressed at opponents efforts heretofore claiming that, “It has been evident in our early fixtures that teams are trying to strangle our ambition to play positive rugby.”

Jones has included all of his RWC players – with the exception of Alun Wyn Jones – in the match 22 as well as one of Scotland’s, Nikki Walker, for the visit of a Munster side who will have Brian Carney and Peter Stringer involved again for the first time since early May in Carney’s case while Stringer’s last appearance in a Munster jersey was in late March.

Munster’s coach Declan Kidney’s response to the Jones plea was simply a wry smile and an acknowledgement of the enormous task facing his side on Sunday. ” It goes without saying that playing the Magners League champions in their own ground is a huge challenge for any side. ” he said.

“And we only have to look at the side they’ve gone for to fully understand how they view this match.”

Nor would Kidney read much into Ospreys’ record to date. “It should be remembered that the losses they suffered were by one and two points respectively but since then they’ve beaten Glasgow Warriors and gone to Edinburgh and drawn. So even before they got their internationals back their graph was certainly on an upward curve.”

“Having said that,” he continued, ” we’d be happy with our own frame of mind. Disappointed of course not to win last week but hopefully we’ll have learned some lessons there and the thing now is to apply them in this situation.”

Ospreys: Lee Byrne; Nikki Walker, Sonny Parker, Gavin Henson, Shane Williams; Gareth Owen, Mike Phillips; Duncan Jones, Huw Bennett, Cai Griffiths; Ian Gough, Ian Evans; Jonathan Thomas, Ben Lewis, Filo Tiatia (Capt). Replacements: Barry WIlliams, Adam Jones, Lyndon Bateman, Steve Tandy, Martin Roberts, James Hook, Andrew Bishop.