London Irish
We Always Lose at Wasps
By Griff
February 17 2014
Irish headed to Adams Park with high-hopes after a massive away win at (then) league-leaders Saracens. Of course anyone who's followed the Exiles for any length of time can tell you how that ends...
Wasps is actually a "home" game for me since I've been a Marlow resident for a good while now, deep in the heart of the flood-stricken Wasps homeland I've even cycled to AP before now. The high-wind and complete lethargy on my part meant I used the handy Cressex park-and-ride for this outing. The trip itself was fairly last-minute since I was thinking I'd give it a miss. We always play badly at Wasps when I attend - I thought I'd give 'em a break.
On the morning of the game, though, I found myself at a loose-end and decided to make the trip. I'm so glad I did.
Arriving at the terraced West stand pretty-much bang-on kick-off I had missed the Toulon-copy "petit filous" planned by the stadium announcer on Waspies.net. Jon_R43 advised me it was "interesting", having read some of the thread about it (and the text) I'm quite glad to have been so late. It occurs to me that if Wasps want to increase the vocal support they could simply stop hitting the "atmoshpere" buttons on their stadium audio-panel quite so often. I love Led Zeppelin and I'm quite partial to Queen on occasion but I now have a quite severe hatred of the intros to both Kashmir (!! one of the best songs ever recorded) and We Will Rock You.
The stadium felt quite empty, certainly at kick-off - it seemed to continue to fill and I gather the A404 had been quite troublesome. I had expected a local-derby to attract a bit of a crowd. While I understand the pricier seats make the eyes water a bit my walk-up terrace ticket at £17 was a bargain.
Irish kicked-off and showed from the outset that they were up-for-it, there is a marked increase in our work-rate to get to the break-down of late - I was at the same ground three weeks ago and we were woeful at getting bodies to the ruck. So even though the kick was controlled by Wasps, pressure pegged them further and further back. Scrum-half Joe Simpson attemtped a clearance kick only to find a bullocking Nic Rouse in the way. The ball was charged-down and Ian Humphries collected to dot the ball down for the first score after only 4 minutes. With James O'Connor taking the extras Irish were ahead 0-7!
Pressure continued to keep Wasps out of the game and shortly after this O'Connor banged a penalty kick between the sticks to make it a ten-point advantage.
This woke the Wasps slightly and what looked like being a procession turned into a contest. The home side were still looking the lesser side, though. Irish's scrum was performing, the breakdown was all the away side with the forwards winning ball at will, only the line-out was keeping the men-in-black in the game. A midfield offside by Irish gave Wasps their first points with Joe Carlisle taking the honours.
The pressure from Irish was unrelenting, though as the beat their way towards the opponents' goal line. Play after play was held-out by a scrabbling home defence - agonizing viewing from the terrace at the far end of the pitch - with sir, Tim Wigglesworth, eventually asking the TMO if Irish had made it count. The TMO adjudged the ball help-up and from the resultant 5m scrum Irish pushed over to give David Paice a try that really should go to the whole pack. O'Connor still had his eye-in and it was amazingly Wasps 3 -17 Irish.
After this restart Wasps managed to find some part of the match they could capitalize on - broken play. Keeping the ball alive they showed that their back-line were a fleet bunch. Elliot Daly was a handful all day and at this point he really showed Irish that they needed to keep control of the game as he mazily ran through defender-after-defender to give the home support something to cheer. It was a wide-effort, though and Carlisle missed the extras in the gusty wind.
Irish learned the lesson and kept it tighter for the rest of the half leaving it Wasps 8 - 17 Irish at the break.
Buoyed by their end-of-half success Wasps came out fighting in the second-half. Daly was still being a thorn in their side but not quite getting the space he'd had for his score. Mr Wigglesworth thought this unfair and gave the home side a kick which dragged Wasps another 3 points closer.
It was shortly after this that "the controversy" happened. A match almost always has one and, often, it's a turning-point. Irish had got back into control and were harrassing the home-side pushing steadily into the opposition half. Wasps, as they did for virtually the whole match were desperately killing the ball to prevent Irish making the most of the pressure. Mr Wigglesworth gave the visitors a penalty on the 22 right in front of the sticks but his attention was brought to some foul play. The TMO was called and even on Wasps' terrible in-ground screen it was clear to see Tomas O'Leary rucking very close to James Haskell's head. Now I'm sure there was a reason for it but it was bit obvious. Irish were playing in the white/bluey-green away kit, Wasps in traditional black and Haskell was wearing a bright blue scrum-cap. I don't think Tomas actually stamped on his head but he certainly put his foot close to it and these days that's just not acceptable. The penalty was reversed and Irish faced 30 mins a man down against the wind.
At this point I'll happily admit I was thinking that if we held-on for a losing bonus-point then it would be a result. What occurred was nothing short of heroic and one of the most incredible performances from Irish it has been my pleasure to watch.
Wasps had the same idea as me, they used the penalty kick to advance and slowly turned the screw. A further penalty shortly after in the Irish half brough them within a score of the Exiles and the pattern repeated a further twice with Carlisle bringing the home-side level at 20 - 20...
And yet, we were still in it. It wasn't all one-way traffic, with Irish still battling at the break-down and still getting turn-over ball and causing Wasps headaches. With the scores level they even found another gear and marched steadily, through many, many phases of pick-and-drive, into the Wasps half. With Humphries subbed Shane Geraghty took control and called a text-book drop-kick move that sailed perfectly between the posts to give the Exiles a slim lead with 5 minutes to play.
Those final 5 mins were very, very long for the traveling support - they must have seemed like years for the players, especially the pack. Irish learned that they could keep hold of the ball and "do a Munster" to run the clock down. Agonizingly during this phase-after-phase play Sir decreed that Irish had sealed-off the ball rather than competing - you can assume I disagreed with him. Carlisle had a chance to level the scores from just inside the Irish half.
I like Joe Carlisle. He'd clearly read the script and missed the kick. Irish gathered the ball and installed it firmly up their jumper for the final minute. After a hearty countdown from the travelers we all called for our lads to clear the ball off the pitch. They chose to knock-on which is less spectacular but has the saem effect.
Job done, Wasps 20 - 23 Irish - the players were rightly proud of their efforts and I suspect Mr O'Leary might have had to stand quite a large round.
Tomas's mistake aside it was a fantastic team effort. A fairly standard rugby plan of get in their faces early and score when you can was executed to perfection. Tomas actually looked back to his best, I hope his enforced rest won't make him forget how to do that. Humphries ran a good game, although Shane looked a little brighter when he took over later, the two "unknown" wingers showed we aren't missing Marland (who was wandering around in the crowd a little sheepishly) and Sheridan made himself a handful for the Wasps defence. O'Connor was sublime, not only mesmerizing with his fast feet but putting in a shift at the coal-face rucking and tackling when required - a prima donna he is not.
But, as ever, it was the pack that won this game. All eight were incredible and their replacements were almost seamless. The dominance at the scrum was an amazing change to the LV= visit three weeks earlier. Fat blokes I salute you!
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BTW the one thing you didn't mention about JO'C was his rather exert guarding of the side of a ruck...
Faugh-a-Ballagh!
"Our prayer is 'God save Ireland' and pour blessings on her name!"
Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum
A day to remember
Of course, I'll correct the story now - then who'll look like a berk ?
