Young left surprised by Wasps’ lack of tour spots

FORMER Wales skipper Dai Young, now boss at Wasps, says Warren Gatland’s Lions squad selection last week left him baffled as to how a side top of the Aviva Premiership can have so few players touring New Zealand this summer.

Ex-prop Young, who himself earned three Lions caps on the victorious 1989 tour to Australia, has piloted Wasps to the summit of the English game this term with the Midlands-based club having a five-point lead over Exeter Chiefs and a seven-point buffer on European champions Saracens.

Yet his star-studded squad were snubbed in a big way by the Lions management, with just England’s Elliot Daly being the only Wasps representative embarking on the gruelling 10-match trip to the land of the long white cloud in June.

Though England lock Joe Launchbury was the highest profile Wasps omission by Lions supremo Gatland, it’s the absence of veteran back-rower James Haskell from the 41-strong touring party that has irked Young most.

“I really feel for Hask because if you look at last year’s Six Nations and in the summer, man of the series,” Young told the Daily Telegraph.

“It’s a hard pill to swallow, if you’ve got 70-odd caps for his country and not made a Lions tour.

“Joe, if he doesn’t get on the plane, has potentially got another crack, he’s young enough. Hask probably hasn’t.

“That will eat away at him deep down. He’s 32 now and probably feels deep down it’s unlikely he’s going to have another crack.

“He was coming into the Six Nations with 35 seconds and 50 minutes, he didn’t have a lot of rugby under his belt and was drip-fed into England then.

“Having that amount of time out, with that little rugby, it’s physically impossible to be at your best.”

Instead of New Zealand, it’s Argentina with Eddie Jones’ England team for Haskell and Launchbury.

And it’s another where Wasps are poorly represented particularly with the absence of outside-half Danny Cipriani and wing Christian Wade, much to Young’s bemusement

“I’m surprised for a team that is sitting at the top, how few representative players we’ve got,” Young said. “You look at the Premiership teams below us, most of them have got more representatives on the Lions and England.”

And on Wade’s snub, with the wing just two tries away from setting a Premiership record for most touchdowns in a season, former Cardiff Blues coach Young added: “Over the last couple of the seasons, he has worked so much on his defence and he is now one of the best defenders within our team.

“He very rarely misses a tackle. Makes some really good defensive reads. He may get one wrong every now and again but so does everyone.”