Hard to be disappointed

[Vespula Vulgaris]

It's never fun to lose, but I can't say I'm particularly disappointed to be out of the ECC now.

I'll have to watch the game when it is available online as I missed the whole thing.

Any highs or lows I should know about?

Not feeling like DW is gonna be a pleasant place for a while...

[Gaz]

Injuries. To Hughes and Cruse, and perhaps Brookes.

If you are of a sensitive disposition regarding people expressing frank opinions of what they saw today, nd feel unable to join the discussion with a contrary view then perhaps DW isn't for you at the moment.

[RBB]

Watched it on BT, too much family stuff on to get to the Ricoh for a late one.

We had two periods where Toulouse were down to 14 men and we failed to capitalise fully, the first yielded a try but we didn't make the most of the second yellow. However, relying on yellows to win is worrying. Toulouse were stronger, more creative and much quicker than Wasps, we are turned over to easily and once the opposition got their heads around that they stepped up a gear. Not a disaster to be out of European competition but some more worrying injuries collected in terms of Nathan Hughes and Tom Cruse, let's see what transpires. We weren't that poor but again we weren't ruthless or efficient in either attack or defence. No doubting quality or commitment, technique is letting us down and that needs to be fixed. Creativity is an another issue, a complete lack of incisive vision again...MLB was very good, as was Carr as a replacement for Hughes, good work from YY as always....9 is an issue, I do like Craig Hampson but we need more creativity and speed in this area.

[Vespula Vulgaris]

Sounds like last week was a blip and we're back to normal service.

I'm worried about this team, I don't subscribe to the prevailing view elsewhere that Lima is actually the devil and gives babies cancer in his spare time, but I do think we have to give the guy the opportunity to show what he can do with a stable platform.  He has moments of absolute brilliance and you don't start for the ABs at 10 unless you are truly gifted.

Fingers crossed the injuries aren't serious.  We're in big trouble if we lose even more front rows.

[NellyWellyWaspy]

Back from the game. Had some Cod 'n Chips. Calmed down a bit.

The only difference between the two sides is we kept coughing the ball up in tackle after tackle. They stripped it off our players countless times. And the missed tackles. All over the place.

The passing down the backs was very poor. Often very slow from Hampson, and all over the place. Poor Lima had no chance. Both WLR and Daly simply threw the ball away rather than face being tackled. Multiple times. It was embarrassing to watch.

Daly spoke a couple of times to Mr Lacey. Listening on RefLink, you could hear the one person who was trying to gee everyone up and was in the ref's face all game, and that was Shields. So much so I think sir thought he WAS our captain.

Stupid mistakes (lack of cohesiveness - not playing as a team), failure to support a breakout runner and wayward passes. Sorry, but Hampson really isn't good enough. On today's showing, I would have no problem seeing WLR, Hughes or Daly going.

Hughes landed badly on his side and probably bruised either his back or ribs. Brookes looked like he had also damaged his ribs on the front. I think Myall and Harris may have been injured too. Cruse certainly was. It sort of looked like a hamstring. Do we have any front row players left? Ashley was certainly off his game today, so I suspect he wasn't really fully fit.

[Rossm]

Hate to state the obvious but Toulouse aren't second in the Top 14 for nothing. They always (IMO only) looked more dangerous and definitely more cohesive. I know it's a cliché but we can now concentrate on the league. Top 6 finish is essential. I'm not too bothered about the playoffs. If we get there we will only be playing away.

[Vespula Vulgaris]

Hate to state the obvious but Toulouse aren't second in the Top 14 for nothing. They always (IMO only) looked more dangerous and definitely more cohesive. I know it's a cliché but we can now concentrate on the league. Top 6 finish is essential. I'm not too bothered about the playoffs. If we get there we will only be playing away.

At this rate if we get to the end of the season and we can still field a full team I'll be happy.

[bargepole]

... I don't subscribe to the prevailing view elsewhere that Lima is actually the devil and gives babies cancer in his spare time, but I do think we have to give the guy the opportunity to show what he can do with a stable platform.  He has moments of absolute brilliance and you don't start for the ABs at 10 unless you are truly gifted.

I'm one of those who has expressed disappointment with his overall performances. He showed one flash of brilliance today, when he suddenly decided to accelereate through a gap, and made a lot of yards through the Toulouse defence which should have produced a try. On the debit side, both Toulouse tries came after he missed tackles he should have made.

Our forwards put in a lot of hard graft, particularly both second rows, but there was absolutely no sparkle in the back play, epitomised near the end when WLR passed the ball to nobody in particular, and it rolled harmlessy into touch. Bassett and Neal tried hard with limited opportunities, but most of the time if they got the ball, it was with two or three red shirts on top of them.

We may as well put out second string / academy teams now for the next three Euro fixtures, probably a blessing in disguise that we won't be troubling the quarter finals, and try and keep enough players fit so that we can have a strong finish to the season, and at least make the top 6 of the Prem.

[Neils]

Just back. Beautiful drive with many stars unlike our team.
On today I would gladly show Hughes the door as he coughed up ball after ball and then got himself injured again. Both WLR and Daly did not play like major internationals.
I totally agree with Nelly on Ref link Brad was the voice constantly in the refs ear. I heard Daly once. He is not a captain. I was impressed by Neal and Booj again. Josh kept trying. The much maligned Rowland seemed to me to be all over the place.
However the amount of ball given up was tragic either stripped or spilt. Too many soft hands.
Brookes played well but just in front of us was obviously in agony with his ribs. Stuart was shown to be lacking nouse by his opposite number in the scrum.
Lima by his own admission is finding it difficult. His penalty that went too far was him trying too hard. His service from others was crap in the most.
We are out of Europe now so what kind of team do we or can we put out. Toulouse will take no prisoners next week.

[wasps]

Well, I found that hugely disappointing.
By the second half, it became clear that if we went through enough phases we would get turned over, either by a strip in the tackle or a knock on. Time and again it happened. Most of the time that we did have ball in hand we didn't seem to be causing them many problems. On the occasions we did, we knocked on.

This isn't a new thing, it's happened to us in previous years too where we were always complaining about our lack of ability to close games out because we were unable to retain possession and go through phases.

This is absolutely NOT a "Dai out", "coaches out", or "players out" type of post.
However, it's gotta be a technical issue that causes us to drop so much ball, or get stripped so often.
Part of the problem is that we still through some low percentage offloads that aren't going to be held every time. Brookes dropped one in the 2nd half but it was hardly a sympathetic offload to him.


The impressive thing is that we were never really out of the game even though our basics were so poor.
We started quite strongly and I was impressed with or intensity early on.

It's a bit of a ridiculous thing to say, but if we had held onto the ball at crucial times, we could have run away with that game today, which would have felt ridiculous given how poor we actually were.

Toulouse are a very strong side, with a lot of heritage, yet even such a poor performance from us with so many errors, and we were close all the way.


I am hugely disappointed, but I'm really not sure how I feel about the bigger picture.
I can't decide if it's a combo of confidence and bedding in causing these problems. It easily could be, and if so, then it'll all go away overnight one day.

I've not been back to DW since it last went down.... I think I'll stay away a bit longer now

[coddy]

Line outs led by Myall were very good yesterday, we were solid enough in the scrum and the defensive structure was fine but let down by too many missed tackles.

The problem is our attack, our forwards are making some good yards with hard, fast runs but the backs are struggling to make any headway whatsover. Watching Cordero yesterday make break after break I'm hoping the rumours of him coming to the Ricoh to replace Wade come to fruition.

[BG]

Morning everyone,

Reviewing a game having watched it on TV is different to actually being there, where you get to see a lot of things happening away from the ball (or lack of things happening). I was on the sofa.

Daly and WLR both looked completely disinterested, as if they didn't want to get their shorts dirty compared to the new guys of Booj and Neale who are preapred to run flat and straight finding soft shoulders to try and break through. Hughes is trying but simply running into people and bumping possibly one person off isn't very productive, as he then gets enveloped by 2 more players, holding the ball which then gets tied up for 5 or more seconds (that's if he manages to hold onto it). When he played for Wasps prior to the Eng call up he quite often looked for gaps and offloads. Ever since going to Eng he seems to have stopped doing that.

Whatever people's views on the backs and lack of creativity this is the hand that we've been dealt with for the considerable future so lets hope that the group as a whole get things together and work things out

[Dgwasp]

Realistically this was almost a dead rubber anyway and, with the group we are in, going through was always an outside chance IMO.  I took quite a few positives from the game.  The first  20-25 mins I thought we competed well and Brookes did well to get over the line, unfortunately you couldn't see if it was grounded or not but we did well.  I think we certainly should have had a bigger lead at HT having conceded soft points and not maximising our own tally.

Second half the pack did their job I thought and got us some good territory to work with.  We defended pretty well and looked for once like a side that can try and prevent line breaks. There is disappointment that the speed and accuracy at the back couldn't make the most of the territorial advantage we rarely have, and there were some real blunders from players which you wouldn't expect, however credit has to go to Toulouse at how well organised they were and again how much better Top and Pro 14 teams seem to be at the break down.

For me Hampson is improving, he started well but seemed to drop off towards the end of the first half and we were noticeably slower at getting the ball moving.

[Vespula Vulgaris]

Some fairly balanced views here. But overall I'm still worried. Whatever the reason is we aren't doing as well as we should.