Despite losing to Northampton Saints at the Ricoh Arena on Sunday, Wasps Director of Rugby Dai Young was nevertheless satisfied with a number of aspects of Wasps’ play with a little over a week to go before the Aviva Premiership league campaign begins.
He said: “Defensively, we were good in big parts of the game, but then there were also areas in the game where we were leaving them to run at us.
“Our line speed needed to be a little bit more active in go-forward – because they were running at us, they were winning the collisions a bit.
“What you want out of pre-season friendlies is to see clear evidence that things you’ve been working on in training are starting to click, which I think you could see I thought we were scrappy with the ball early doors. We did put together some really nice phases of play and we looked dangerous, but on too many occasions we also spilled the ball in the first two or three phases, which didn’t allow us to build as much pressure as we would have liked. There were some real good parts of the game, but there were also areas we can improve on, which is good because you don’t want to be completely happy with where you are at this moment in time.
“So there are still areas to work on, but the biggest thing for us is that our thought process needs to be clearer.
“That is the overriding feeling. We seem to be getting pretty good at losing the game in the last two or three minutes, which is not something we want to continue, that’s for sure.
“With four and a half minutes to go, having just scored, it was quite obvious what the opposition needed to do – they had to get the ball back.
“Yet we were lying deep for the re-start, they just kick and win the re-start.
“We should have actively been looking where they were setting up to make sure they couldn’t retain that possession.
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“We defended for two or three minutes, managed to get the turnover and then panicked.
“What we should’ve done is set up our structures, go through our structures, exit on our terms, which would have allowed us to get the organised chase.
“Instead we kicked loosely, had to defend again, gave away a silly penalty and then ended up five metres from our line again – giving them the opportunity to score the try.
“Let’s not forget Northampton topped the table at the end of the regular season last time out, so we’re not a million miles away from it.”
