Dai gets nod on a special night for club

DAI Young topped off an incredible night for Wasps at the Aviva Premiership awards when he was named director of rugby of the year.

Wasps’ boss saw off both his Premiership title rivals, Saracens’ Mark McCall and Exeter’s Rob Baxter, to scoop the prize. This was his first win and also the first occasion that the man in charge at Wasps has scooped the managerial honour.

Young has led Wasps to a top-of-the-table finish which delivers a home semi-final for the first time. The black-andgolds won 17 of their 22 matches, and were unbeaten at the Ricoh Arena.

Under Young Wasps have also now improved their finishing position year-on-year after narrowly avoiding relegation courtesy of an 11th placed finish in 2012. The subsequent sequence has seen them progress from eighth to seventh, sixth then third prior to finally topping the pile.

Wasps dominated proceedings at London’s Lancaster Hotel, and the headline act, as he has so often been already this season, was Jimmy Gopperth.

Dai Young’s man-for-allseasons, or more accurately all positions, won three individual awards as well as being named in the 2016/17 Dream Team.

Gopperth collected the Golden Boot early in proceedings, for ending the season as the Premiership’s top-scoring kicker, with 215 points. He had twice previously collected this prize during his time at Newcastle.

He went on to pip teammate Christian Wade for the try-ofthe-season award, for finishing off a sublime team effort against Northampton at Franklin’s Gardens in the autumn.

“I was just lucky to be on the end of that one,” Gopperth said. “It was a bit of magic from Cips, good following up from Guy Thompson and luckily I managed a bit of a snake move, so George North didn’t catch me.

“To be honest Wadey deserves all these awards this year, as some of his tries have been individual brilliance.”

Wasps’ flying machine did at least take home a consolation prize in the form of the top try scorer award, while he also joined Gopperth plus colleagues Elliot Daly and Joe Launchbury in the Premiership Dream Team. DAI Young knows Wasps will face a tough physical test against Leicester tomorrow, but is confident the Tigers will not change their stripes.

The black-and-golds have already beaten their Midlands rivals twice this season, and if they can make it a threetimer they will book a first Premiership final appearance in ten years.

The previous encounters - at Welford Road in September and the Ricoh in January - saw Leicester respectively under the control of Richard Cockerill and Aaron Mauger. Remarkably, for a club where stability has been a watchword, their former centre, ex All Black Matt O’Connor, is a third different man at the helm this weekend, but on the field his Wasps counterpart is broadly expecting more of the same.

“Leicester weren’t totally different under Aaron Mauger to how they were under Richard Cockerill,” Young says.

“Most of their players had worked with Cockers for a long time and probably knew what they were going to get with him; Mauger was doing it slightly differently and obviously Matt O’Connor will be now.

“But after only three months there can he turn it all upside down? I doubt it.

“He can make adjustments but not wholesale changes, so I don’t expect them to be much different to before.”

The Aviva Premiership rugby-director-of-the-year is however quick to stress that he is still expecting a very challenging afternoon, especially against Leicester’s traditionally robust forwards.

“Leicester are all about physicality, so the challenge for us is going to be up-front,” he says. “The scrum is massive for them and they have a fantastic front row.

“Genge is tremendous prospect and a hell of a character and I’ve got a huge amount of respect for Dan Cole as well.

“They’re two boys who are going to be in our face all game, they’re happy to get up close and personal outside of the scrum as well.

“They’ll also be physical at the breakdown.

“They’ll be chucking themselves into that to make sure we don’t get any quick ball.

“They’re really going to take us on physically.

“If you look at his past record, Matt is a very attack minded coach, so I won’t be surprised if they have one or