Joe: Wasps must still draw lots of inspiration
lt’s the time of year to worry more about results than performances now. It goes into the next few games now. Joe Launchbury
JOE Launchbury admitted some Wasps players accidentally referenced a weekend ‘defeat’ following their dramatic draw with London Irish.
The Black and Golds allowed a 25-point lead to slip at the Brentford Community Stadium as the Exiles rallied to secure a 42-all draw. It lead to a ‘unique’ atmosphere in the changing room that saw the long-serving captain move away from his usual post-match routine.
“I nearly always speak after a game,” said Launchbury, whose desperate attempts to stop London Irish’s stoppagetime rolling maui were punished with a penalty try that levelled the scores.
“I feel that it’s important to try and close off the game whether it was good or bad. But I didn’t actually speak after the game at the weekend.
I felt it was best, there were entirely different emotions in the room, which is kind of unique really.
“Normally you’ve either won or you’ve lost, it’s very clear what sort of emotions are in the changing room. We’ve even come in this week and a few guys have accidentally said we lost, but we didn’t actually lose, we drew at the weekend.”
Despite not securing the win, Wasps did extend their unbeaten run to seven games in all competitions heading into tomorrow’s European Challenge Cup quarter-final with Edinburgh. Launchbury pointed to positives that could be salvaged but there was no escaping that 15-minute period when Irish landed four tries.
“On reflection, looking back, what happened shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “There are certain things we can always be better at. In terms of moving in the right reaction with how we want to play, the style of rugby we want to play, how good we can be, the first 60-70 minutes was there or thereabouts about as much pressure as we’ve put on an opponent all season. We were clinical with the ball.
“Defensively pretty sound, it was a very hard one to review in the immediate aftermath. Sometimes I speak too emotionally straight after a game, so I left it this time.”
Wasps remain one point off the top-eight, the expected qualification limit for next season’s Heineken Champions Cup, with two Premiership rounds remaining.
Another route into the elite competition would be to lift the Challenge Cup – which would be the club’s first trophy in 14 years and the maiden silverware in Launchbury’s club career.
“The beauty of rugby over this side of the world is we go pretty quickly into a fresh competition, but a really huge game for the club,” he said. “It’s a huge game for us as players.
“We started in the other competition, we won against Toulouse at home which gave us the right to be fighting in this competition. I know from my time at the club that you don’t get these knock-out games very often so when they do come around, you need to make the most of them.”
Launchbury, who has only been on the losing side only once in his ten Wasps game since returning from an ACL rupture in January, stressed the club would fight until the end of the season. He was one of a large group of players, which included Jack Willis and Paolo Odogwu, who provided an injection of quality to the squad in the second half of the season.
“What we’ve shown over the last month or two is, we’ve had a consistency with what we’re about and how we want to approach the game, that’s shown in results,” the England international said.
“lt’s the time of year to worry more about results than performances now. It goes into the next few games now, whatever presents itself in Europe and then in the Premiership.
“Top-four aspirations have potentially sailed away but every place counts in that league that’s why I am not a huge believer in all these dead games at the end of the year. I don’t believe there are any dead games in the Premiership.
“You’re constantly fighting for something, even without relegation this year. A club like us, we’re absolutely desperate to be back at the top table of Europe next year, one way to do that is to finish as high as you can in the table.”