Wasps used to win the Premiership play-offs despite not finishing top, but three tries in the final quarter kept them at the head of the table at the end of the regular season to set up a semi-final with Leicester, who finished a distant fourth, rather than a return bout with Saracens. Thomas Young scored three tries but it was the home side’s two major close-season signings, Kurtley Beale and Willie le Roux, who had the means to puncture the meanest of defences.
Saracens rested five of their six Lions, along with their captain Brad Barritt, wing Chris Ashton and scrum-half Richard Wigglesworth before Saturday’s European Champions Cup final against Clermont Auvergne, but they had shown below-strength did not equal weak against Northampton three weeks ago and they had won nine of their 10 previous Premiership matches against Wasps, who fielded their strongest available side.
The kick-off was delayed for 15 minutes because many in the 30,000-plus crowd had left their arrival late. It meant the fixtures on the final round were no longer synchronised and that Exeter, the other side in contention to finish at the top of the table, would be having a shower when the game here ended.
The most prolific attack in the league was pitted against the tightest defence and the opening two minutes offered a snapshot of the season: Wasps took play through 15 phases and made ground when Jake Cooper-Woolley took Jim Hamilton for a long ride and Beale, a player with the deceit to pick any lock, angled his run into the midfield to reach the Saracens 22, but if a door opened it was only momentarily.
Alex Lozowski stopped the rather larger Nathan Hughes head-on without conceding a centimetre, Schalk Burger upended Danny Cipriani and when James Haskell was held up, Joe Simpson’s knock-on ended the early siege. Wasps, who had led the table for most of the year but had started to show signs of wear, were playing with a zest and purpose that could not have been more pronounced had they spent the week listening to someone calling them soft showboaters.
Saracens were the last team to defeat Wasps here, in December 2015, and beating them involves taking opportunities, which are rarely plentiful. The champions absorbed pressure, waiting to counterattack. Young saved Wasps when he tackled Marcelo Bosch and forced the centre to hold on and concede a penalty, but after Jimmy Gopperth had put the leaders ahead with a 35-metre penalty, awarded after Titi Lamositele had collapsed a scrum, the first try of the match followed the restart.
Wasps sloppily conceded a lineout in their 22 and when Saracens set up a ruck Ben Spencer spotted that instead of guarding a ruck Tommy Taylor was on the ground clutching his left ankle and ran through the gap to touch down under the posts. Wasps were in front again within two minutes: Danny Cipriani, restored to the side after three weeks on the bench, replicated New Zealand 10s in Super Rugby, whose antidote to a rush defence is a dinked kick into space. All Young had to do was pick up the ball to score.
Where Wasps attacked from all over, prompted by the elusive Beale, Saracens waited for the moment. They regained the lead on 31 minutes when Bosch kicked a penalty from halfway after Haskell had been lured offside by Spencer, but the half then turned.
Christian Wade’s kick to the line went straight out of play, but not before the Saracens wing Sean Maitland body-checked his opponent and earned a yellow card. Gopperth kicked the penalty and Wasps exploited their man advantage just before the interval when Le Roux, after he had hustled Spencer into conceding a scrum five, created Young’s second try with a long pass.
It was Wasps’ 86th of the Premiership campaign, a tournament record, and they led 16-10 at the break having lost two of their front row to injury. They needed a cushion and after Ashley Johnson, Taylor’s replacement, made various dents in the defence, Le Roux created space on the left and Elliot Daly would probably have scored had not Gopperth run across him.
Gopperth’s kicking from the tee was unusually inaccurate. He missed a penalty from 40 metres as the game – with Exeter securing a bonus point at Gloucester to go top – became more nervy. Wasps stared to play for position as the match threatened to come down to who would enjoy home advantage when the sides met in the play-off semi-final.
Wasps needed two tries to remain at the top of the table. Beale created their first, his chip to the line half-secured by Le Roux. The ball fell loose and all Wade had to do was touch it down for a record-equalling 17th try of the league campaign.
But Wasps needed another after Spencer’s second try checked their momentum to set a date with Leicester rather than welcome back Saracens – and it arrived when Joe Launchbury stole a lineout from one of the second-rows chosen ahead of him by the Lions, George Kruis, and Le Roux freed Daly who accelerated away from Jamie George before Young’s hat-trick completed an ultimately comfortable victory.
Wasps Beale; Wade, Daly, Gopperth, Le Roux (Bassett 71); Cipriani, Simpson (Robson 54); Mullan (McIntyre 64), Taylor (Johnson 18), Cooper-Woolley (Swainston 23), Launchbury (capt), Symons (Myall 69), Haskell (Thompson 64), Young, Hughes
Tries Young 3, Wade, Daly Cons Gopperth 2 Pens Gopperth 2
Saracens Wyles; Ellery (Earle 53), Bosch, Tompkins (Goode 57), Maitland (Taylor 68); Lozowski, Spencer; Lamositele (Barrington 50), Brits (capt; George 50), Koch (du Plessis 42), Hamilton (Isiekwe 60), Kruis, Rhodes, Wray, Burger (Brown 71)
Tries Spencer 2 Con Lozowski Pen Bosch
Sin-bin Maitland 33
Attendance 30,115 Referee Wayne Barnes
Match rating 8
