Rollercoaster ride could end with best-ever year for Wasps
WHO would have thought 12 months ago that the 2019/20 Premiership rugby season would still be ongoing with the next winners of the title undecided? Here, our rugby writer focuses on 365 days of action at Wasps...
AYEAR ago on Monday the 2019/20 season kicked off for Wasps with a harrowing home defeat to Saracen’s B-team. With 15 players away at the Rugby World Cup and another coaching Canada in the form of veteran scrum-half Richard Wigglesworth, the reigning European and Premiership champions scored six tries on their way to an emphatic 50-28 victory at the Ricoh Arena.
It was only in the Premiership Cup, granted, but Wasps had poured resources into the game. Jimmy Gopperth, Dan Robson, Tommy Taylor, Zach Kibirige and Kieran Brookes all started. More was certainly expected than a home humbling.
For every crumb of comfort, such as first senior tries for Thibaud Flament and Callum Sirker, there was a crushing blow dealt then or soon after.
Having played just 23 minutes of the previous season, Gopperth’s afternoon ended after just five minutes with a fresh blow and while Alex Rieder made a try-scoring return to action, the 53 minutes he played would prove to be the last of his professional rugby career as his knee issue flared up forcing his retirement in December.
Even the Sirker score would later be tinged with sadness as he ruptured knee ligaments playing for Ampthill just a few weeks later and hasn’t yet returned to the field of play.
Injuries and defeats had become the common theme for Wasps in their 2018/19 campaign which saw them flirt with relegation before finishing eighth in the table.
For Saracens, who had defeated Wasps in the Premiership Sevens final earlier that month, it was another showcasing of their unbelievable squad depth. With a World XV away in Japan they could still turn on the style in a competitive match in the Midlands.
Nobody could have foreseen what happened in the ensuing year, especially for those who were at the same stadium on the afternoon of January 18.
There was the stench of despair at the Ricoh Arena as Wasps suffered a fourth-straight home defeat to a heavily-rotated Bordeaux Begles who danced before their small gathering of fans after earning a 27-0 win. The defeat completed Wasps’
A year on from that despairing start to the season, Wasps have their play-off destiny in their own hands.
miserable European Challenge Cup campaign which ended at the pool stages. It was the kind of performance that sees heads roll. But before that narrative could build, a bigger news bomb landed.
Saracens had already been hit with two massive points deductions for salary cap breaches but it was only on the evening of January 18 that their relegation was finally confirmed by the authorities.
It was to trigger a succession of events in the first three months of 2020 that has helped shape the Wasps of today.
They had won just twice in the first eight Gallagher Premiership rounds. One of those came at Bristol Bears in their final game of 2019. It is a match best remembered for Nizaam Carr’s late score and Jacob Umaga’s first Premiership try (he scored five more in his next 11 league games), but it was sandwiched by demoralising home defeats to Harlequins – when Wasps let a 17-point lead slip away – and to a Northampton side with just 13 men on the pitch when Taqele Naiyaravoro drove over for a late matchwinning score to put Saints second in the table.
A promising win on the road at Worcester was swiftly forgotten as Dai Young’s exit in mid-february was confirmed the week after. Lee Blackett’s first game as interim head coach was an 18-9 defeat to Leicester Tigers at Welford Road.
Young’s parting gift to the club he served so loyally for so long was a squad brimming with youth and talent. Players such as Umaga, the Willis brothers Tom and Jack, Gabriel Oghre, Tom West and Tim Cardall made their senior debuts under Young.
His fingerprints remain all over the squad that has won nine of its last ten games to rise to second in the table. The 23-man squad that put Bristol Bears to the sword all came through the system under Young – with the exception of Joe Launchbury – or were recruited by him. Even the Ryan Mills signature was one Young had put in place prior to his departure.
The Welshman’s exit brought about a change of structure with the director of rugby role being erased and Pete Atkinson recruited from the Italian international set-up in a newly-created head of performance position.
This was just the tip of the iceberg behind the scenes. From the Wasps staff listed in the Bordeaux match programme in January, only one member of the strength and conditioning team remains in their position and the physiotherapy department has also been overhauled.
New coaches Richard Blaze (forwards) and Neil Fowkes (scrum) have entered the set-up, with Andy Titterrell being the main casualty in that department.
Then came the coronavirus pandemic and postponement of the season in March, stopping Wasps in their tracks after securing a hat-trick of bonus-point wins – kicked off by a 60-10 thrashing of Saracens to exorcise some Ricoh Arena ghosts from earlier in the campaign.
While it has dealt a savage blow and necessitated the redundancies of many people at the beating heart of the club, the congested schedule that followed the restart five months later has played into
Wasps’ hands.
Having focused on squad size, rather than placing an emphasis on bigname signings that was their tendency in the early years after relocating to Coventry, they have been able to absorb the rigours of midweek games and their most-rotated squad selections against Worcester Warriors and Saracens still delivered results. Would the 2016/17 squad had coped so admirably with seven fixtures in 28 days? I’m not so sure.
A year on from that despairing start to the season, Wasps have their playoff destiny in their own hands with two rounds of the regular season remaining. They’ve used 42 players across seven matches since the restart and handed debuts to two more current academy players in Kieran Curran and Charlie Atkinson – both of whom featured in another victory over Saracens, this time at Allianz Park earlier this month, to complete a home- a nd- a way
double.
There is fresh hope and confidence emanating from within the camp with Blackett, aged just 37 and in his first ‘top job’, taking it all seemingly in his stride and setting a tone for his players to follow.
He may have apologised on social media for celebrating Tom Willis’ match-winning try at Saracens, but I’m sure it was a gesture dismissed by all Wasps supporters who were doing exactly the same on their sofas up and down the country. It was another ‘breath of fresh air’ moment.
Whatever comes of the remaining weeks of the campaign – be it two, three or four more games – the 2019/20 season is one that Wasps, a club that is no stranger to rollercoaster rides, upheaval, glory and controversy, could hand over the rights to for a movie or a Netflix special.
If they go all the way to lift a first Premiership title in 12 years on October 24, it would surely amount to one of, if not the most, incredible achievement in the club’s 153-year history.