Experience is important for the here and now — trying to do without it is a dangerous game — but youth offers hope for the future.
Cut to the Ospreys, where Toby Booth has spent the past two years nurturing a core of bright prospects whose quality was in evidence in the final match of last season, against the Bulls in Swansea, when the starting home pack contained four players who were 23 or under.
Dewi Lake, Will Griffiths, Jac Morgan and Morgan Morris helped the Welsh team win 53 percent of the possession against opponents who were relentlessly physical and would go on to reach the United Rugby Championship final.
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The Ospreys lost on the night, but the effort of their younger players offered hope for tomorrow.
The south west Wales region were also encouraged by the strong performances of Joe Hawkins for Wales in the U20 Summer Series. Skippering the side, the centre led from the front as the team reached the tournament final, with Hawkins nailing the decisive penalty that hoisted Wales to a 23-20 win over Italy in the group shootout. In the previous game, against Georgia, he’d had a hand in all four Welsh tries — one of which he scored — and came up with last-ditch defence to deny the east Europeans at a key point in the game.
Head coach Byron Hayward was delighted with his efforts, saying after the triumph over Italy: “What’s a world-class player in the under-20s? It’s a player who would get in any under-20s team in the world in his position. And Joe Hawkins is one of those.”
The 6ft, 15st 5lb Hawkins is big enough to truck the ball up and defend robustly but he also has soft skills and an impressive kicking game.
Booth knows the development process can take time, but he is optimistic for the future at the Ospreys.
“I’ve said from day one that producing our own players is really important for me, for the boys themselves and for the region,” he commented.
“I’m very emotionally attached to the idea.
“Joe Hawkins is someone who has a lot of promise.
“You saw how good he was for Wales in the U20 Summer Series. He’s a very exciting prospect and I’m looking forward to seeing him step up and play more of a first-team role and hopefully transferring his U20 stuff into the senior arena.
“Then there’s Dewi Lake. It would be good if he could keep improving and striving to become more consistent. He has good leadership potential and good physicality, so it’ll be interesting to see where he goes. He has had a taste of international rugby now, which is great and should benefit him.
“People have also spoken a lot about Jac Morgan after his Wales caps last season, but he’s still a young man and he is only going to get better.
“Those three players are the future of the Ospreys and it’ll be about building a team around them and others like Will Griffiths and Morgan Morris.
“I make no secret about what that is going to look like.
“Watching those boys grow as players and leaders is going to be great this year. That’s what excites me about this project.”
Morgan should be fired up for the new campaign after being overlooked for Wales’ summer tour of South Africa. He had an excellent first season at the Ospreys, improving his attacking game and defending resolutely and standing out with his work over the ball.
Lake will want to build on his breakthrough campaign, while Morris and Griffiths need to keep playing well. The Ospreys supporters and sponsors’ player of the year last term, Morris was one of Welsh rugby’s top-performing players at regional level, yet he was overlooked completely by Wales.
At the other end of the age spectrum, the likes of Alun Wyn Jones, Dan Lydiate, George North, Gareth Anscombe, Rhys Webb and the returning Justin Tipuric will provide the Ospreys with experience.
Finishing ninth in the United Rugby Championship last year, the top Welsh side but missing out on the playoffs, the Swansea.com Stadium team hope to do better this season.
“We want to improve year on year,” said Booth. “We want to become more consistent around certain elements of our performance.
“A lack of bonus points meant we didn’t reach the URC knockout stages last season. We won enough games but missed out because we didn’t have those extra points. We have to look at the performance areas around that, first and foremost, and that’s where our emphasis has been.
“We want to attack better to increase our try count and defend better to make sure we’re in losing bonus-point territory and keep winning games. As boring as it sounds, it’ll be more of the same but we want to become better at it.
“From an outcome point of view, we want to get into the final shake-up. We are not here to make the numbers up. We are here to keep improving. We were rock bottom when I came here a couple of years ago, with two wins over the whole season. We’ve made steady progress since and we're the only Welsh region to qualify for the Heineken Champions Cup this season. We know that competition is going to be extremely tough, but we’ve earned the right to be there and we’ll enjoy the journey, wherever it goes.
“And we want to get to the play-offs.
“It’s pretty simple: once you get in those games, you see what happens.”
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