London Wasps 51 Leeds Carnegie 18: match report
Read a full match report of the Aviva Premiership game between London Wasps and Leeds Carnegie at the Reebok Stadium on Saturday, April 16 2011.
Touchdown: Zak Taulafo (left) is congratulated by his Wasps team-mates after scoring a try at Adams Park Photo: GETTY IMAGES
By Mick Cleary, Rugby Correspondent, at Adams Park 7:08PM BST 17 Apr 2011
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At a time when Leeds’s Premiership prospects look decidedly bleak after their 16th league defeat, Wasps have set about shaping their own future. Elliot Daly, an 18-year-old schoolboy centre, is the pick of a crop of fresh-faced youngsters entrusted with restoring the club to their former glory. Leeds, level on points at the bottom with Newcastle but having played a game more, could only look on forlornly. The abyss beckons.
Wasps certainly needed to do something to pull out of their own tailspin. Injury may have forced their hand but the presence of 11 players under the age of 23 (three of them schoolboys) in their match-day squad only illustrates that Wasps should trust in youth if they are to bring the good times back to Adams Park. The kids certainly brought energy and a devil-may-care attitude. Scrum-half Joe Simpson, hardly geriatric at 22, was a handful, busy and purposeful, scoring two tries and orchestrating play splendidly.
“I want people to look back in 10 years’ time and see a day like this as the start of the revolution,” said Wasps’ acting director of rugby, Leon Holden. “The young players have got no fear and there’s a touch of arrogance about them such that they’ll do things older players wouldn’t do.”
Daly, who will take up a three-year contract in the summer after finishing his A-levels at Whitgift School in Croydon, has been a star turn for England Under-20s this season, scoring seven tries in their Grand Slam junior Six Nations campaign. He has pace, balance and a punch in the tackle, and twice floored big lumps opposite him. Both tackles, first on heavyweight Leeds centre Luther Burrell and later on England hooker Steve Thompson, set up tries for Wasps. Joe Simpson finished off the first after Richard Haughton had hacked through, Haughton himself completed the honours for the second such try shortly after half-time.
Wasps are mindful of the celebrity circus that enveloped one of their former young bucks, Danny Cipriani. They stress only that a lot lies before Daly. That is true. And that can only make followers of English rugby feel upbeat and hopeful. The likes of Courtney Lawes and Ben Youngs have come through the same route. Daly is next in line.
“Seeing what they’ve done does give you that impetus that it could be you one day,” said Daly, who eventually succumbed to a heavy knock to his shoulder in the 64th minute but his work was done.
Wasps are pretty much outside the reckoning in the Premiership in eighth place, a fittingly low placing given that this was only their second victory in their past eight league matches. At least, though, they are finishing with a sense of purpose and can look forward to their St George’s Day outing against Bath at Twickenham on Saturday with relish.
For Leeds, there is only an all-too-familiar grim struggle to stave off relegation. Their survival is out of their hands. They play Harlequins at home this weekend before a final day trip to high-flying Northampton. Their points difference is inferior to Newcastle who have that precious game in hand.
There was a real sense that they might get something from their travels here. They fielded a gnarled pack of forwards and from their early dominance in the set-piece, it looked as if that experience might get some purchase against a callow Wasps side. For long stretches of a hard-fought first half that is exactly what appeared about to happen.
Aside from Simpson’s early first score, Leeds traded on pretty much equal terms. At 5-3 with just seven minutes to go to the break, the match had the air of a typically scrappy end-of-season affair. Then a yellow card was shown, rather harshly, to Leeds full-back Michael Stephenson, and Wasps took full advantage.
Within quarter of an hour of the second half starting Wasps led 37-6, Haughton having scored tries either side of half-time, hooker Joe Ward crashing over and Simpson bagging a second.
Leeds’s die was well and truly cast. They did not fold but they were too one-paced and limited. Rhys Oakley got one back before a rattle of tries from Harrow schoolboy, Billy Vunipola and prop, Zak Taulafo, settled the issue, Christian Lewis-Pratt scoring with the last act of the match for Leeds.
“The squad feel they let everyone down but we’re still going to give it a dig,” said Leeds’s head coach, Neil Back.
His side will need all that defiance in the coming days.
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