The matches that defined the Golden Era - Part 1
The Guvnor
By Shrek
August 20 2010
Shrek weighs in with the first part of a series of articles describing the matches that, for him, defined the Golden Era for Wasps. Here is the first part - London Irish v Wasps, 29th September 2002, and Stade Francais v Wasps, 18th January 2003 Enjoy, and share your thoughts on these in the discussion. More to follow soon.
1) London Irish v Wasps, 29th September 2002
When Warren Gatland came to Wasps, the first thing he set about changing was fitness levels. The season before saw a significant amount of injuries, as well as the team struggling to match the physicality of other sides. In that season the side were pretty much beaten up at the Madejski, in what turned out to be Nigel Melville’s last match at Wasps. Gats knew things had to change, and change they did.
The first half saw top draw Rugby from both sides, but London Irish simply couldn’t live with the Wasps attack. Alex King put Wasps 3-0 up with a penalty after nine minutes, before Paul Sampson followed up Rob Howley’s quick chip ahead a few minutes later. Howley then sneaked through a gap to score by the posts after some excellent forward drives and then Shane Roiser started, and finished a fantastic team try to make the score 24-0 to Wasps at half time.
Craig Dowd secured the bonus point as the game crept towards the final quarter, before Mike Worsley responded a couple of minutes later. Declan Danaher added a quick brace in the dying minutes, but it was merely consolation. Final score: Irish 21 Wasps 31... and Connor O’Shea reportedly said his team played well. Wasps played a hell of a lot better.
2) Stade Francais v Wasps, 18th January 2003
The reaction of many DWs when it was confirmed Wasps would be spending a season in the Parker Pen Cup as it was back then was “Great! No blooming Stade Francais”. Annoyingly despite Stade twice beating Wasps convincingly the season before, domestically their form wasn’t great and so they too faced a season in the lower tier European competition. In many ways it was a shame the two sides met in the quarter finals, but it did mean, in a low key environment, Wasps showed exactly what their forthcoming success would be based on – Blitzing the opposition.
Having won the first leg 35-22 Wasps knew Stade would come out fighting. Having lost 40-10 and 31-0 in their last two visits to the Stade Jean Bouin, Wasps had been pretty much written off by the locals. How wrong that proved to be. The French struck first, but on 15 minutes their job got a lot harder as Kenny Logan made a break. He was dragged down on the 22, but with a massive overlap, Fraser Waters crossed to put Wasps 8-6 up. Diego Dominguez kicked a penalty to put Stade back in front before Logan showed what the blitz defence was about. With Stade having a 2 to 1 overlap, Logan had to make the right call – and he did, intercepting and racing over 70 meters to score under the posts. King converted. 15-9 Wasps.
A few minutes later, Stade panicked and strayed offside. From 52 meters out Logan added 3 more points. King did the same to make the score 21-9 to Wasps at half time. Stade would need to score 26 more points than Wasps.
That never looked like happening. Dominguez kicked a further three points just after the break, but that was it for Stade, despite plenty of pressure (the official report on the Wasps site says Stade spent 80% of the second half in the Wasps 22). From what I can recall Wasps only got in the Stade half of the field once during that second half, which makes the fact that Wasps still won the half 6-3 all the more staggering. Logan kicked another penalty from inside his own half, before King added another. Despite Wasps finishing with 14 men (Craig Dowd in the sin bin) and Stade setting up camp on the Wasps line, there was no way through. Final score 27-12.
When the final whistle went, I stood up, cheered, hugged the nearby Wasps fans and then turned around to shake the hands of the Stade Francais fans sitting near me, only to see a surreal sight. 5 and a half thousand Frenchman had vanished in around about 5 seconds. Good losers this lot!
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For me, the defining matches of the golden era actually started a season earlier - we were deep in relegation trouble but then played Home games to Tigers & glos (both stand-out sides that season) in quick succession. I certainly expected to take a thumping but we blew both teams off the park.
Although ultimately we went on to lose away to sale in the final game of the season, we had already seen the dawn of the new era that was to follow.
That Leicester match was one of three that I found really hard not to include.