Wasps
MATCH PREVIEW: WASPS v LONDON IRISH
A 'cup team'?
By Dobbin
November 19 2010
After two weeks of patchy commitment to the LV= Cup, as well as the apparent renaissance of England as a nation that can actually play something approaching rugby, this weekend sees a return to Aviva Premiership action for the clubs, and a visit from London Irish for Wasps.
The last time the Exiles pitched up at Adams Park, the home team were coming off three losses in their last four league games and hopes weren't high. What followed, however, was a performance of verve and creativity and one of only two try-scoring bonus points that Wasps secured last season. It was in April, the early days of what we now call the new interpretations, which injected life into a season in which the defining image had been baseline battles worthy of Borg and Connors at their peak, and the defining sensation a cricked neck from spending roughly forty minutes per game staring at the sky. It seemed to herald a new age, a new dawn of attacking rugby, something that would play right into the hands of a club like Wasps. They dispatched London Irish with aplomb that day. Sights were set high. Three weeks later Bath gave us the mother of all maulings in the St George's Day game at Twickenham.
And therein lies the frustration of being a Wasps fan (and no doubt a Wasps player or coach as well). For the past two or three seasons we have been treated to glimpses of greatness, of hope, only to fall back into a malaise of mediocrity. For every thumping of a Leicester or London Irish there have been two or three (or four) supine collapses to teams mired in the same mid-table bog of inconsistency, or worse. Which might be a long winded way of saying that we have a team incapable of scaling the heights often enough to challenge for honours, that Wasps aren't in fact good enough to be at the top. Maybe that's the unpalatable truth at the moment, but being a supporter is not about accepting the facts. It's about seeing the victories against Leicester or London Irish or whoever, and wondering why that kind of performance doesn't seem possible against Leeds or Newcastle or Sale.
Once upon a time, a club able to produce scintillating one off performances but not a season full of consistent rugby would have been called a 'cup team'. Once upon a time, that was Harlequins all over. It wasn't necessarily a pejorative label, though. In an age when, more often than not, the league title went to the brown envelope brigade down in the West Country, with an occasional interjection from West London or the East Midlands, tilting at the cup instead was a perfectly honourable endeavour. And before the advent of the national leagues in 1987, it was the main show in town.
Nowadays, of course, the descendent of that competition has become nothing more than an irritation for many clubs, relegated as it is to the backwaters of international weekends. The likes of Leicester can't get out of it quickly enough. London Irish too, it seems. It's like a school cross-country run in the snow: the line of competitors pleading injury or loss of kit or, you know, chill-blains or something, gets longer every season. Any excuse will do – just get us out of it. For the likes of Wasps and others in the mid-table doldrums, however, it ought to be a chance to kick-start the season. That's why the last two weeks have been a disappointment. The chance to get some momentum into the season seems to have had the opposite effect. The scale of the loss to an Exeter second fifteen was shocking, even accounting for Wasps' own absences. The home win against Bath last week, while at least a win, was still patchy and unconvincing to these eyes. Bath were poor – that Wasps could only squeak a two-point win against them, at home, hardly makes one confident as the Aviva Premiership returns this Sunday.
London Irish have fared even worse than Wasps in their two LV Cup matches to date, losing convincingly to both Sale and the Scarlets, but you sense Toby Booth and co won't be that upset at these results. They have bigger fish to fry. Currently sitting atop the Premiership table with six wins from seven, it is the Exiles, not Wasps, who have seized on the new interpretations at the breakdown and turned them to their advantage. With a wealth of attacking options both up front and in the backs – Hala'ufia, Stowers, Lamb, Ojo, Mapusua, the Armitages, to name but a few – they have already accumulated four try-scoring bonus points, and scored more points than anybody else so far this season. Their only reverse came at Bath in just their second match – since then they have won five Premiership games on the trot. If you had to look for a negative, you could point out that, of the four teams below them, they have only played one, and that at home, but they can hardly be blamed for the fixture list! And the important thing is that they have momentum, which we are frequently told is half the battle.
It is Wasps' job to stop this momentum on Sunday. The home team will go in as underdogs, and while the absence of Stowers, Mapusua and Delon Armitage on international duty will weaken the visitors in some areas, Wasps' own absentees (Shaw, Taulafo, Lemi, Powell), coupled with significant injury doubts, swing the pendulum right back in Irish's favour. So what can we hope for? Well, the one thing that can be said of Wasps in the last few seasons is that the games they seem to do well in are those against the teams in the top half of the table (ignoring, for a moment, the horror show that was Northampton at home). It's as though the competitive juices only really flow when there's a significant challenge to be faced. And as challenges go, Irish this Sunday is right up there. But really, isn't this just clutching at straws? What we really want to see from Wasps this Sunday is something coherent, something hard-edged, something effective. Something that can be worked on, that can become a habit, that will lead to consistency. We want to see Tom Rees in the ear of the referee when he gets it wrong (although, as the referee is Bryce Lawrence, the New Zealander who made Phil Vickery's life interesting in the first Lions test last year, Tom might have to choose his moments). We want to see Dan Ward-Smith getting some support when he runs at the opposition. We want to see wingers given the ball in space. We want to see a defence worthy of the name.
Once upon a time, it was okay to be called a 'cup team' because there was a cup competition worthy of the name. No longer. Wasps have to start winning in the Premiership, and a repeat of last April's result against London Irish this Sunday would be just the kick-start we need
Allez Wasps!
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