Young taking on defence duty after Sarries stinger

WASPS rugby director Dai Young will adopt a more hands-on approach to his side’s leaky defence following last week’s semi-final hammering by Saracens.

Premiership rugby’s nearly-men shipped six tries in the 5733 defeat and were heavily out-gunned up front – areas Young will address after the departure of defence coach Phil Blake and the arrivals of new forwards coach Danny Wilson and assistant Ian Costello. Young, below, told TRP: “I’m always confident we can score points and if you look at the last three or four years we’ve always been up there among the top try-scorers, but if we want to achieve things we have to shore-up our defence.

“Another challenge is controlling the gain-line and stopping big ball-carriers getting momentum. We struggled against Saracens there, which meant we conceded too many yards too easily and then we couldn’t contain their power and accuracy.

“Set-piece is another huge challenge if we’re going to compete at the highest level and I hope the coaching changes we’ve made will help.

“Ian Costello has a lot of defence coaching experience from his time with Munster, so he will take the lead for us in this area, and now Danny Wilson has joined Andy Titterrell to work with the forwards, I will contribute to defence.”

However, Young has vowed not to sacrifice the club’s commitment to attack in the wake of recent setbacks – nor does he expect the departure of Danny Cipriani to impact adversely, adding: “Lima Sopoaga’s coming in as a slightly different player but we certainly don’t see that as a weakness and he’ll help us continue in an attacking vein.

“We’ve got great pace out wide and want to play entertaining, attacking rugby so we’re not going to flip it. But we can’t allow teams to score 50 points against us, no matter how good they are – those questions must be answered.”