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28

Derek Richardson

I’m hurting right now, and I suspect I’m not the only one.

I’d be willing to bet that the players are hurting a good deal more than me, and the coaches too. I actually can’t think of much worse ways to lose a game as important as that one than by a penalty in the dying moments of extra time.

In some ways I’d rather we put up a valiant fight but were outclassed. But to have played as well as we did, for the game to be as close as it was, and to have lead for a large part of it only to have it snatched away by what feels like a toss of a coin really burns.

That doesn’t mean I begrudge Exeter their win. They have played really well all season, and there has literally been almost nothing between us all season. We finished on the same points in first and second, and only tries scored put us in first. One team had to win, and as you will no doubt have read many times in the rugby press already Exeter’s story is a rags to riches fairytale that makes the perfect story. It is a tale of the plucky underdogs winning the biggest prize of all thanks to good teamwork and brilliant coaching.

But that fails to take account of the fact that Wasps’ story is similar. We weren’t the plucky winner of the Championship promoted to the big league but fully expected to go straight back down that somehow managed to survive, rebuild, strengthen, and eventually beat the best in the world. But Wasps are a team that had no right to survive.

We were saved from relegation by one tackle. One man’s premature celebration, coupled with another man’s desparate attempt to help his team stay up – and a man who was famed for never really tackling at that – kept Wasps in the Premiership when they should really have gone down.

And if Wasps had been relegated they likely wouldn’t have survived.

The team was bankrupt. David “Dai” Young was forced to buy supplies from his own pocket, and somehow not only managed to keep the platers motivated, but also managed to persuade new players to sign for the club. It’s not a secret that I credit him with saving the club from its darkest hours, but there is another man who needs to be mentioned.

Wasps were a team on the edge, unwanted tenants of a football club, playing in a small stadium at the end of an industrial estate. A team fielding a mixture of untested academy prospects alongside retired players who had agreed to put on the kit to sit on the bench so we could field a full team. A team with no prospects, no long term owner, and no way to survive. The only perceivable future was a gradual sink through the leagues until finally vanishing altogether.

And then the unthinkable happened.

The club was bought, lock stock and barrel by a successful businessman. But not just any old businessman, a man who had not only made himself an awful lot of money, but a man who was a genuine rugby fan. A man who recognised the heritage, the potential, and the possibilities in the team.

Derek Richardson came on board when we needed a saviour most, and whilst it seems a little hyperbolic to use that word it is the most appropriate one I can come up with.

Within no time at all Wasps had some security. We weren’t relegation prospects any more, and Dai could keep his money and not have to buy supplies for the team. Retired players could watch the team from the stands instead of the bench, and new players started to come in.

Then, seemingly out of the blue Derek’s Wasps bought an immense arena two hours up the road and the team moved away from Adams Park.

I won’t lie, I thought it was a mistake. I had grown to love Adams Park, and the Ricoh was too far away for me to get to regularly, but I’m a big enough man to admit I was wrong.

I thought it was a cynical move to make some fast money and that the club would end up a poor second to the financial interests of an already rich man.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

No-one who saw Derek celebrating Daly’s try yesterday could believe that he doesn’t really care. He is a man with a real passion for rugby, and he actually cares about the club, the players, and the supporters. Not long ago my youngest son went into remission after a year’s treatment for a rare form of Cancer. I’d never met Derek, or even had any reason to speak to him, but he rang me at home to offer his congratulations and to tell me to let him know if I brought my son to the Ricoh so he could make sure we got to meet the players and made it as special a day as possible.

So whilst Exeter’s Cinderella story is complete. They’ve gone from plucky losers to ultimate winners. Ours is even more complete too. Winning the Premiership would have been the icing on the cake, but the fact is that we were seconds away from vanishing, and now we are topping the league, playing in the biggest stadium in the Premiership with record crowds, we are playing exciting, entertaining rugby, and we are genuinely looking to the future without apprehension.

And that is down to one man.

Thanks Derek, we owe you one.

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28

Dear Saracens fans

Firstly congratulations on your stunning victory last weekend. It was great to see not only an English team win the European Champions cup, but also to see a team that has almost become a force of nature in full flow.

You thoroughly deserved the win, and the fact that it was a double makes it even more impressive.

And that leads me to the point of this missive.

Enjoy it. You are clearly one of the best teams in the world right now, you are accumulating silverware at a quite terrifying rate and it is well deserved. Your players are great, and they play together as a team so well that they all look even better than they would anywhere else. Don’t let anyone tell you you don’t deserve the plaudits you are getting. You really do.

But be aware that it is unlikely to last forever. Ten years ago we were where you are now. Celebrating yet more silverware, and feeling that it was ours by right.

In some ways it was, but in the same way the rapid slide to the bottom of the table, to be saved from relegation by a tackle from a man reknowned for never tacking was ours by right. That is just the way rugby is.

Some people, fans of other teams, learned to hate us back then when we were at the top. For some reason that seems to be the way of things. I’m guessing you have noticed that. People run your team down for being successful, and you down for supporting them. For some folk that will never change. Some people still hate Wasps and for no reason other than we beat them 10 years ago.

You’re also bearing the brunt of the salary cap debacle. Whatever you think of that, whether you believe your team was guilty or not it isn’t going to go away. It just becomes part of who you are. Much like Quins and “Bloodgate” and us with our uncontested scrums. It isn’t fun, but it is part of the team identity. But that is what being a rugby fan is all about, taking the rough with the smooth, experiencing the heartache of the lows, and the joy of the highs, as well as the guilt of knowing that perhaps your team weren’t as innocent as you’d want them to be.

So enjoy it, try to ignore the odd glitch along the way. You had the Valentine’s Day massacre last year (still one of my favourite all time games), but find any long term Wasps’ fan and watch their face when you say “Pertemps Bees” and you’ll know that you’re not alone in having the odd unexpected failure when you are otherwise on the top of the world.

I have no idea whether you will stay at the top of years, or whether this is the beginning of the end for you, but either way I hope that we’ll see you in the finals at Twickenham and that we spoil your party, just like we did for Leicester all those years ago.

Domestic rugby is in a great place right now, and that is due, at least in part, to you. We wouldn’t have been able to have the resurgence we have had if it wasn’t for you.

So thank you.

Well done for winning yet another cup, and hopefully see you in a few weeks.

Vespula Vulgaris

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28

Haskell and Hartley talking to Poite

James Haskell has come in for a lot of stick recently after Romain Poite’s snarky reply to him during last weekend’s International against Italy. I think not only is ti completely unjustified criticism, but he should be being lauded for his actions, not slated.

Unless you’ve spent the last week living in a cave you no doubt know that Italy, under their head coach O’Shea played a very unusual tactic. They refused to commit players to tackle when England had the ball, and by doing so did not create a ruck. The consequence of this was that there was no off-side line and so the Italian players could legally walk around the tackle and disrupt the patterns of the English team.

Whether you think this was a travesty of rugby, or an inspired bit of tactical play by a wiley coach is irrelevant. It was clearly legal, and was equally clearly causing England some serious problems.

What was also obvious was that there had been some sort of discussion beforehand between Italy and Poite. At no point did he look like he even considered penalising the Italian players, and was clearly on the same page as them in their desire to upset the apple cart. It was revealed after the game that there had indeed been a discussion where the tactic was explained and Poite agreed it would be legal if certain criteria were followed. At no point was the England squad party to these discussions.

And so, during the match, when the tactic was in full flow, and Poite was happily letting the Azzuri disrupt the game England were not just on the back foot, but there were playing catch up.

The laws are clear, and I have no doubt that every player on the field understood them, what they did know however was how Poite was enforcing those laws and what criteria he was using to make the distinction between a tackle (no off-side line) and a ruck (a very clear off-side line). The only possible way to find that out was to ask him directly.

And that is exactly what James Haskell did.

He might not have asked in the most efficient way, but he was clearly confused by the way the match was going, and he was very frustrated that what he saw as illegal infringement was being called as legal by the referee. He asked Poite to clarify exactly what the law was.

Instead of answering his question Poite took it upon himself to make a sarcastic remark in reply.

I don’t think anyone should need to remind him that during the game he is the sole arbiter of what is legal and what is not. And part of his job is to communicate that to the players. It is done at set pieces, it is done when one team is under pressure and repeatedly infringing, it is usually done at the breakdown. But not this time.

The conversation went on with James Haskell attempting to get clarification of how close a player had to be to be considered part of a ruck, and whether he could simply drag on Italian player into the tackle to create a ruck. Eventually Poite answered his questions, and the second both sides had the same information the tide turned.

There is more to it that this.

Haskell did exactly what you would expect of an experienced professional rugby player in a frustrating situation. He didn’t take matters into his own hands, he asked for detailed clarification. And when he didn’t get it he asked again until he did.

The most striking thing to me, second only to Poite’s seeming delight in pulling one over the England team, was that it was James Haskell that did the asking.

Haskell isn’t the captain. He isn’t even one of the vice-captains.

He is simply a back rower who has recently returned from injury, that many people say shouldn’t be in the team at all. The actual captain was standing next to him, his mouth shut, not contributing anything at all.

And so this is why I think all England fans should be celebrating James Haskell’s behaviour last weekend.

He saw a problem, he saw that the “leaders” weren’t sorting it, and he did everything in his power to resolve the situation without risking infringing the laws himself.

To my mind he put his had up for the captaincy of the team. Hartley has not been on form recently, and it is supposedly for his leadership he is being retained. Last week he didn’t show any of that at all when it really mattered.

That was left to “The Brand”