This coming weekend’s quarter-finals of the European Champions Cup will demand a slight shift in focus but Wasps remain a side to be taken seriously on all fronts. Ten victories in their past 11 matches in all competitions is a decent form line in anyone’s language and the Premiership’s third-placed team are starting to acquire the priceless knack of winning comfortably when not at their best.
If the Coventry scoreline suggested a reasonably one-sided contest between two clubs who must now be referred to as Midlands neighbours, the reality was rather starker. Only on a couple of fleeting occasions did the Saints seriously threaten to cross the home line and, on another day, Wasps would have collected more than a brace of well-taken tries from their alert full-back, Rob Miller, and a late dart by the replacement scrum-half, Jamie Stevenson.
Had their lineout proved more reliable and a couple of crucial passes gone to hand it could have been a rout, with the Saints’ normally solid pack suffering the indignity of being shunted backwards on a frequent basis. Northampton were unlucky to lose two internationals, Kieran Brookes and Lee Dickson, to head knocks but their heaviest league defeat of the season will not be remembered with great affection by any of Jim Mallinder’s players. Dickson was knocked out following a heavy challenge from Elliot Daly but the television match official’s view was that no serious offence had been committed.
That will be of little consolation to Mallinder, who says he “cannot remember a period when we’ve had so many concussions”. Two more senior players, Dylan Hartley and Luther Burrell, have already been sidelined recently and Mallinder and his coaching staff now have only six days in which to regroup for Saturday’s quarter-final at Saracens.
The following weekend will be equally significant, with the Saints due to face their other Midlands rivals Leicester in a game that looks set to determine their play-off prospects. They looked uncomfortably flat here and, with Harlequins and Sale both finishing strongly, even a top-six finish cannot be entirely taken for granted.
How they could do with an inspirational catalyst such as George Smith, who has done so much to turn Wasps from fringe candidates into genuine contenders. On this occasion the Australian was the instigator of both Miller’s tries and the Wasps coach, Dai Young, once again paid tribute to the impact the flanker has made since arriving at the club on a one-season deal. The 35-year-old is returning to Japan this summer having definitively proved that class, when allied to an unstinting work ethic, is truly permanent.
Precisely how many trophies Wasps will hoist before he leaves will hinge on their ability not to drift in and out of games, as they were slightly guilty of doing in front of a healthy crowd, many of them clad in bright yellow in support of the Marie Curie charity. Exeter, their European last-eight opponents, will be quietly encouraged by their recurring lineout woes and Young will be reiterating this week that improvement in a couple of other areas is also required. “Everyone realises today’s performance won’t be good enough,” he stressed. “Next week we’ll have to be far more accurate.”
With a shade more precision Wasps might have been 20 points up by half-time. The game was only six minutes old when Miller stepped past Ben Foden and seemed to have made the line only for television replays to prove inconclusive. Shortly before the interval, a break-out led by their scrum-half Craig Hampson, on loan from Bristol, would also have yielded a try had Joe Launchbury’s pass not been intercepted at the vital moment by a scrambling Ken Pisi.
There was no such escape for Northampton early in the second quarter, however, when Thomas Young capitalised smartly on Smith’s initial line break and Miller plucked a cricketer’s catch off his toes en route to the line. With the fly-half Jimmy Gopperth slotting the simple conversion to add to an earlier penalty, the only surprise was the absence of any further scoring by either side for the rest of a stop-start half.
With a battered Sam Dickinson also failing to emerge for the second-half along with the shaken Brookes, the pressure on Saints was further ratcheted up by the boot of England’s Elliot Daly, who kicked two monstrous penalties from his own half. A groggy Dickson had also departed by the time Miller cut a lovely line from Smith’s clever pass to put the outcome beyond doubt, with Stevenson nipping over in the right corner for a third score with two minutes left.
It completed a convincing double for Wasps over Northampton this season and, in the process, guaranteed Saracens’ presence in the end-of-season play-offs.
Young is hopeful both the Charles Piutau and the Dan Robson will be available for the Exeter game, although Hampson is not eligible for European selection. If Wasps can afford to recall Piutau at full-back and relegate the in-form Miller to the replacements’ bench it really will be a sign of their gathering strength. Times are increasingly changing in the Midlands, regardless of how well Northampton can bounce back in the next fortnight.
Wasps Miller; Wade, Daly, S Piutau, Halai; Gopperth, Hampson (Stevenson, 66); Mullan (capt; McIntyre, 64), Johnson (Festuccia, 49), Cooper-Woolley (Cittadini, 66), Launchbury, Davies (Myall, 61), Young (Haskell, 56), Smith, Hughes. Tries Miller 2, Stevenson. Cons Gopperth 2. Pens Gopperth, Daly 2.
Northampton Foden; K Pisi, G Pisi, Mallinder, North; Myler (Hanrahan, 70), Fotuali’i (Dickson, 54; Collins, 62); Waller (Ma’afu, 62), Haywood (Marshall, 68), Brookes (Hill, 19), Lawes, Day (Craig, 61), Wood (capt), Harrison, Dickinson (Fisher, h/t). Pens Myler 2.
Referee L Pearce (RFU). Att 17,422.
