ON New Year’s Day we come up against a defence that I look up to as a coach – the Ospreys have always been outstanding without the ball.

As part of the Newport RFC management team they are definitely one of the teams that I use as a marker of where we’d like to get to.

They double up on teams and are excellent at slowing the ball down and jackaling at the contact area with the likes of Justin Tipuric.

That means we have to improve at the breakdown, because Cardiff Blues had the better of us there on Boxing Day.

It was a very disappointing day all round, one or two refereeing decisions went against us but we didn’t help ourselves with our performance.

We started poorly and allowed the Blues to get into the game then put pressure on before half-time to stretch away.

It was an opportunity for us to get a big win and was frustrating to watch and even more to play in- which was shown from my post-match interview I've been told.

Apparently I didn’t look too impressed and, although it’s part of the job, it’s hard to talk when emotions are still raw and you need to be careful about what you say.

We started preparations for the Ospreys on Wednesday and there’s a fine line between reviewing what didn't quite go as we wanted to against the Blues and dwelling on it. We need to move forward.

We go into the game on the back of a derby defeat while the Ospreys head here after winning against the Scarlets.

They did what they do best at the Liberty Stadium; it was a close game but the Scarlets were the first team to crack.

The Ospreys are a really good team and are challenging for the title but we’re on a run of five wins at Rodney Parade and just have to go out there and perform.

When we played them at the Liberty Stadium in October we were a little naïve and it felt like we were running into a brick wall.

I don’t have any worries about us defensively, especially at home, but sometimes we can lose our shape in attack so that’s a major focus on us against the Ospreys.

As I said, they are strong defensively so we need to stay patient and everyone just has to do their job rather than forcing things.

Do that and we can start 2017 with a big derby win, giving us plenty of confidence for home games with Treviso and Enisei.