Joe Launchbury: England the best cure for Wasps Gallagher Premiership final pain
Alex Lowe, Deputy Rugby Correspondent
Wednesday November 11 2020, 12.01am, The Times
Joe Launchbury lay on the sodden Twickenham turf, his arms covering his face as he heaved deep sobs. Moments earlier Wasps had blown their chance to win the Gallagher Premiership final by losing a key lineout. Exeter Chiefs took control, closed out a 19-13 victory and Launchbury dropped to the ground behind his own posts, inconsolable in the teeming rain.
That was the last we saw of the Wasps captain, doubts running through his head about whether all the physical and emotional energy he had expended in leading the club from tenth place to the final had been worth it.
Yesterday, Launchbury was in a much more chipper mood, having had a couple of weeks to process the Premiership final, contextualise Wasps’ achievement and switch his focus on to England matters.
The prospect of returning to Twickenham on Saturday — “the scene of the crime”, as he put it — fills Launchbury not with dread but excitement as England prepare to kick off their Autumn Nations Cup campaign against Georgia.
“It was painful,” Launchbury, 29, said. “After all the hard work we’d put in to get there then the despair and pain you feel at the end, you sometimes question whether it was all worth it, to fall at the final hurdle.”
That sense of dejection was deeper still because Wasps’ chance of victory had been stolen from them by Jonny Gray, the Exeter lock, who rose to intercept Gabriel Oghre’s lineout throw five metres from the Chiefs’ goalline.
“In games like that, with the weather as bad as it was, we kind of felt that was our opportunity,” Launchbury said. “We worked very hard to navigate territory in those conditions. A lot of the match was spent in the middle of the pitch and we felt when we got down there at the end that was our opportunity to take the game. We will all look back on that one critical moment as a big frustration. There are a few things we could have done differently in that scenario.
“Sometimes, that’s what those fine-margin games come down to — whether it’s finals or international games. We had it in 2017 against Exeter as well. History has kind of repeated itself slightly.
“In a way, the fact that we had that shot made it worse. If we’d just stayed in the middle of the pitch and not had that opportunity to win the game, although we would have felt disappointed, it might have been easier to take.
“What was really tough to take was that we worked ourselves into that position and then didn’t take the chance, in a game as big as that. That’s probably where the emotion came from — the raw upset that you saw from a lot of us.
“But a couple of weeks on, we can look back and be proud of our efforts and proud of everything that went before [the final] to turn our season around.
“I have really loved my rugby over the last few months and really enjoyed being part of that team at the club. That is probably why the disappointment felt so strong.
“For sure, no one wants to lose in finals and we’ve lost two finals now so there’s a sense of disappointment about that but the overriding feeling is being really happy with the way we bounced back from a pretty tough start to the season.”
Launchbury had a day or two at home with the family after the final and then was straight into the England camp. He was not involved in the title-clinching Six Nations victory over Italy but is expected to feature against Georgia.
“Whether it’s going back to the scene of the crime or just getting back into rugby, I’m very thankful,” he said. “A lot of the [Wasps] guys had a few weeks off but I came straight into camp and I feel that was probably the best thing for me, or I would have been sat there every day thinking about that game.
“The fact I came into a new, exciting environment was the perfect tonic for me. It really helped to focus my attention and look forward rather than back.”
What lies ahead is the Autumn Nations Cup, a new competition created when the scheduled one-off November Tests had to be cancelled. It could be a taste of the future, with the RFU a key driver behind plans to introduce a global Test championship.
Judging by the utter indifference shown towards the tournament format by England’s players, it is unlikely to stir the emotions anything like winning a Six Nations title, or even losing a Premiership final.
Always a Wasp
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