Marshall believes the Ospreys missed a golden opportunity

Justin Marshall says the Ospreys' EDF Cup final win over Leicester has not eased the pain of last week's Heineken Cup quarter-final loss at Saracens.

The Welsh region ensured silverware by beating the Tigers 23-6 at Twickenham.

"The EDF is important, but the ultimate for me coming to this part of the world was the Heineken Cup," he told Scrum V.

"Even after the great highs of Saturday there's still something in the pit of my stomach that really regrets that we've missed a golden opportunity."

Former New Zealand scrum-half Marshall says that the 19-10 loss to Saracens in the Heineken Cup had rocked the Ospreys.

We learnt our lesson from Saracens Justin Marshall

The Ospreys had comfortably beaten the English side in the EDF semi-finals and were expected to brush them aside again in Europe.

With their Heineken semi-final and then the final scheduled to be held on Welsh soil at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, the Ospreys were many people's favourites for the whole competition.

"To go down to Twickenham after such adversity the week before, I'd be lying if I said it was an easy game to get up for," Marshall added.

"It was really difficult, it was a pretty sombre week, there wasn't a lot of smiles around.

"But because we had a tough team to play against plus a big occasion, the guys were able to focus on it and we went out and we played really clinical rugby.

606: DEBATE The forward display was very good indeed, the back-row was immense bedfordwelsh

"The good thing is we are learning that we're quite an ambitious side that wants to play.

"To do that you've got to get reasonably quick ball, you've got to recycle it effectively.

"If you come up against teams that are going to be negative and stop you doing that, you've got to be really efficient at the breakdown.

"We learnt our lesson from Saracens and produced a better performance in that area against Leicester."