The Season Stops Here - Saints 9 Wasps 10

This was not a championship-winning Wasps side; indeed, on paper this must be one of the poorest sides in their name ever to visit the Gardens. One thing they did have though was the ability to stick to their gameplan and carry it out for the full eighty minutes, an ability greatly lacking in the home team yesterday. Massive credit, therefore, to their big players; Dallaglio, O’Connor, Worsley, Van Gisbergen, King, Greening. They stuck to their task and clawed their team first back into the game and then to maintain a one point lead for almost a full forty minutes. From that stubbornness, champions come. Saints are just not in that league.

The facts, however grisly. Matt Dawson, warmly applauded by many before the game but abused for the whole eighty minutes by a couple of idiots near me, gave away the first scoring penalty for going offside, which Shane Drahm kicked. Alex King then missed two eminently kickable penalties before Drahm made it 6-0 and Van Gisbergen missed a longer range effort. With the Saints pack running roughshod over the Waspies eight (as it should be with a third choice front row playing), it all looked bright in the rain, not least when a scrum was won against the head near the line. A couple of recycles of the ball, and then Phil Greening decided to come round the side and bat down a Robinson pass with the try just begging to be scored.

Penalty try? Yellow card? If not the first then surely the second? When is cynical play, a calculated ply to give away three points rather than seven, mere over-exuberance in a pressure situation? The Leicester team that won so many championships were masters in this sort of situation (and some would say still are), and, like it or not, all teams need a cynical edge to get them through tight situations - again, something that would appear to be lacking in Saintly play. Only a penalty was awarded, but referee Ashley Rowden will probably be looking at the video this week to see if he was right in his judgement in not putting his hand in his pocket - my call, now, would be that Greening should have been walking (my actual call was penalty try at the time). Drahm kicked the points; Saints were 9-0 and comfortable.

King finally put the champions on the board just before half time, but the reflections at the interval were that as the weather brightened, so would Saintly flair. Instead, the first forty seconds summed up the season so far. We looked for expansive play, but the promise was shattered instantly as Wasps ploughed up the field and Saints scattered. Peter Richards, playing even further out of position than normal, turned Mark Tucker inside out so much that it merely became a matter of who would score rather than whether they would do so. Ed Thrower, on as a half time replacement, eventually had the easiest job of making the grounding for probably the quickest try he’d ever score, and King kicked the conversion. As the sun came out, the black clouds of doubt started to settle in Saintly minds.

That the scoring had then finished for the match was unlikely, but sadly reflective of the quality of the game. There was another contentious possible carding when Dallaglio, Hoadley and an un-named Waspie killed the ball two yards from their own line, but again, only a penalty was awarded, which Drahm this time sliced wide. Shortly afterwards, with a penalty in a virtually identical position, Drahm again went for the kick - and again missed. Surely the better decision, with the lineout almost fully functional and the pack dominant, would have been to stick the ball in the corner and trust Wally, Lordy and Basil to get it right?

There was another chance to score a try, with Robinson putting Blowers through but being denied by a man and ball tackle from Van Gisbergen with the ball flying forwards, but it was increasingly looking likely that it would probably come down to a drop goal. There were two attempts, the first being from too far out (and with a yellow hand on it), and the second being butchered by a Sharky pass that reached Drahm on the bounce and with six men bearing down on him.

Wasps took the points, their supporters celebrating with a great sense of disbelief, as the home support trooped away disconsolately. Warren Gatland commented later that it was their greatest victory ever, something which I can’t disagree with. The big names on their injured list will no doubt be feeling that much fitter this morning at the thought that their nothing men, those men that are sometimes so vital in a championship winning squad, did a job at one of the supposed fortresses of English rugby, and have kept them in line for their aim of top four at Christmas. If this is the spirit in that squad, then medals are about seven months away.

Alan Solomons, on the other hand, said for the second match in succession that Saints were “the authors of our own misfortune”. In that case, there’s no-one in the current squad who is going to become a best seller.

The game was bigger than Dawson versus whoever. He didn’t have a shocker as such, but did a decent job with a pack going backwards. The worry is that Robinson didn’t make the most of his comfortable ride. None of the backline is immune to criticism, they all seem to have their own agendas at the moment; a lack of ideas, dreadful decision making, poor execution.

If one of the Saints squad were to see Chris Tarrant at the moment, they’d be phoning a friend on the £100 question.

Two incidents from the second half, aside from the second missed penalty, sum up the malaise. First, Reihana took the ball down the line, and where he’d previously have shown Thrower inside or out and then gone the opposite way, he ran straight into him. Second, Wally had a two on none overlap outside him, but didn’t trust the pass to Mark Tucker and instead took the tackle, and lost the ball. Add Drahm’s missed penalty at the start of the match, a kick from halfway that didn’t get near to reaching the posts, and you can see that everyone is wanting someone else to do the thinking for them.

To put the season into perspective, to finish top of the pile, Saints need to win every game. That, patently, is not going to happen. To get into the top three, they can only afford to lose probably three more games at most. Three out of seventeen - unlikely. To me, any chance of qualifying for the Heineken Cup through the league is gone; it now comes down to the cups. The Heineken Cup group now looks like a mountain whereas before it looked like the order of fixtures at least were in our favour. The Wildcard is literally that - wild. Play well on two consecutive Saturdays and you get in. But to get into that you have to finish in the top seven, and even that, on yesterday’s display, looks beyond this squad.

So it’s the Powergen Cup then. Unfortunately, at the moment, I can see us getting drawn away to Bedford and having the fight of our lives to get through, let alone a Pertemps Bees or Rotherham.

The players now have four days off before coming back to prepare for Sarries. I hope there’s a shake-up. Swap Bruce and Drahmy, to make our most effective attacker be in the game and dive Drahm the kind of space his kicking game needs. Bring in Chris Hyndman, just for something different, and look at Starling or Tombleson from the Wandies for the same effect. And as much as it is hard on the pack, dominant this week but dreadful last week, perhaps there needs to be a freshness.  Too many players went missing yet again; too much of a lack of confidence in both individual abilities and in that of colleagues; too little faith that someone else might have an idea on how to spark the side. One man in his programme notes was obsessed with spirit; in hindsight, it was the wrong man. This was, this is, a broken team that needs major fixing, a major shake up to try and lift the malaise that is there. 

What worries me most of all is that there seems to be an individual missing who’s been there in previous seasons. The man who can inspire the supporters and the players about him through the strength of his character, his ability, his words; a Budge, a Bealer, a Dawson. A local hero, so to speak, who everyone can get behind.

Every side has one; Johnson, Dallaglio, Anglesea, Vickery, Humphries, to name but a few. This Saints squad is lacking that man. The man who’s going to grab the badge of the shirt and beat his chest. The man with Saints in his heart, and not just with the salary in his pocket.