One Day in Kingsholm: Gloucester 22 20 Wasps

Two booming, second-half penalty kicks from replacement fly-half Nicky Robinson secured the spoils for Gloucester on Saturday, a late attempt at goal from Dave Walder falling short, something the Wasps team had disappointingly done all day.

The first few weeks of the new season have seen much talk about the new interpretations at the breakdown, but it is Wasps' own innovations which are providing most of their problems at the moment. The thirty-minute half was once again in evidence against Gloucester, as was the get-out-of-a-tackle-free card, seemingly handed out to the opposition before kick-off and redeemable at any opportune moment during the game itself. This is not to say that old ploys aren't still in evidence, however. Spill-the-ball-at-the-restart is a familiar sight to anyone who has watched Wasps for any length of time, as indeed is brainless-penalty-just-after-you've-taken-the-lead. An example of the latter led to Robinson's match-winning kick five minutes from time. Add in forwards clogging up the midfield, missed penalty touch-finders and general second-bestness in the tactical kicking stakes, and Wasps only have themselves to blame for this result. Not to be outdone in the innovation stakes, however, referee Andrew Small had brought his own selection from the current laws tombola in the form of penalties for flopping over the ruck. A welcome attempt to prevent the breakdown turning into a non-contest it might have been, but these sudden variations in the application of the laws do nothing to prevent the dissatisfying impression that Rugby Union is currently a game making itself up as it goes along.

The day had started well. Clearish roads and a following wind had meant an early arrival in Gloucester, and a chance to soak up the atmosphere of a match day. The area around the ground is steeped in rugby history. The two pubs on the road outside are packed with memorabilia (and in the case of Mike Teague's more flashy place a rather un-PC notice behind the bar advertising for “attractive” new staff). Another pub around the corner has a massive rugby ball sticking out of the roof. The staff in the chippie next to The Kingsholm Inn were keen to talk about Wasps' result against Leicester last week, though we were too experienced to give any credence to their predictions of a Gloucester defeat. Inside the ground itself, there's still a welcome air of old-fashionedness: the new stands look like old stands – who needs cantilevers when you've got good old view-blocking steel pillars to hold the roof up? The Shed is the centre of the ground, of course, much more so than the patch of green stuff in front of it. The sound of hundreds of West Country voices chanting the name of the town, their club, in unison, amplified and projected forward by the low, corrugated metal roof so that it roils across the pitch to the opposite touchline, is still one of the great experiences in our game. You can imagine the same thing happening in the decades gone by, as the yeomen of Gloucester toiled through the mud with the cherry-and-white on their backs, taking the fight to those bas-- sorry, men -- of Bristol and Bath. Terrific stuff.

And then, unfortunately, the game started. The first twenty minutes were a study in effort without precision. Both sides were guilty of stodginess, of lateral movement, of sloppy handling. In fact the only impressive element in the match at this stage was the glossily magnificent perm that sits atop Lesley Vainikolo's head. It is a thing of wonder. Suspicions were raised in the stands that it wasn't part of Lesley at all, that it was a separate entity capable of independent movement, so effortlessly did it take the game in its stride. He and it were in perfect unison, unruffled by the stiffish breeze blowing down the ground, unfazed by the couple of early kicks that Walder sent in their direction, undented by any kind of contact with the opposition. Did the Gloucester physio, in addition to the usual bandages, ice-packs and strapping, have a couple of cannisters of Silvikrin tucked away in his bag? How else could the perm survive the rigours of a Premiership rugby match (unless the Volcano had the full complement of get-out-of-a-tackle-free cards, that is)? Not until the sixtieth minute or thereabouts did Wasps fight fire with fire, with the introduction off the bench of Richard Haughton and his streamlined afro. It produced immediate dividends. Stunned by the new barnet on the block, Gloucester allowed Del Boy to run the ball back between them to their own twenty-two, setting up a Joe Simpson try that sent Wasps into the lead. But then came those two Nicky Robinson penalties.

The Simpson try had been preceded by two others in the latter part of the first half, both examples of the benefit of hard, direct running, something that was little in evidence for most of the match. For Gloucester, Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu had broken through some rather lightweight tackles and given Dom Waldouck the mother of all hand-offs to cross the try-line in the 37^th minute. Earlier, Dan Ward-Smith had broken out and shown an impressive turn of pace to score for Wasps, much to the annoyance of the Shed who had collectively and unanimously spotted an earlier offence that referee Small had incredibly failed to pick up. Those of you who have explored the lower reaches of satellite and cable television might know of a programme called Most Haunted, fronted by a rather shrill ex Blue Peter presenter. In this programme a team of nutcases spend the night ensconsed in a reputedly haunted building looking for signs of paranormal activity, and getting almightily spooked by things like draughts and bits of dust floating about. With all the latest, most sensitive audio-visual equipment trained on areas of the house the biggest nutcase of all has identified as the most favourable, they fail time and again to obtain any evidence whatsoever of the existence of ghosts. They should invite the Shed round. These guys are capable of detecting things that no other mortal men or any of their precision machines are capable of spotting. They witness in their thousands touches of the ball that are mere microns forward. They knew instantly who was responsible for the bout of fisticuffs between Tim Payne and Brett Deacon on the other side of the pitch that resulted in both men getting yellow cards in the first half. There is nothing that doesn't get past these boys (and girls) – not even nothing itself. If you want to find the tiniest tremors in the air, the merest shades passing across windows in gothic rooms, that will finally prove the existence of the spirit world, then these are your men.

The chaps from ESPN might well have preferred to be in some haunted castle somewhere rather than in their mobile studio in the Kingsholm car-park immediately after the match. Sitting Austin Healey on a stool with his back to the crowds and a TV camera in his face must have seemed a good idea before the trip to Gloucester, but then lots of things do. This was the ultimate test of the new, embedded-in-the-crowd format. I'm not sure it came through with flying colours. The atmosphere was as it generally is at Kingsholm – boisterous, loud, good-natured, witty and beery. Mark Durden-Smith was struggling to make himself heard. Even Austin was struggling to make himself heard. Sitting between Austin and Mark, Josh Lewsey was also probably struggling to make himself heard. After watching Wasps for the previous hour and a half, I was struggling not to tell Josh that he ought still to be on the pitch, rather than pursuing a career in management consultancy of all things. The Wasps midfield had struggled to make an impression all day. Sad to say, Flutey and Waldouck is not a combination that is yet producing the results we hoped it might (early days, I know). We were crying out all day for a straight, determined, defence-committing runner and Lewsey was sitting besuited and booted in a tv studio with one of those funny microphones strapped to his head. Criminal.

And so Wasps followed up a good win with a loss, which was the story of last season and something the coaches must have hoped we'd move on from. As the Shed emptied, as the supporters drifted away to their homes or the pubs opposite the ground, as the drinkers in Teague's Bar found the bar-staff getting more and more attractive by the glass, these Wasps supporters also drifted off and spent the night doing what the supporters of London clubs do when they're not heading home immediately after a match in the glorious surroundings of Kingsholm, Gloucester.

We went to Cheltenham.