“They’re too good a team to think you can defend against them for long periods" - Dai Young

Dai Young, Wasps director of rugby, was left dismayed by his side’s performance against Leinster on Friday.

Wasps fell to a 52-3 loss to the champions after heading to into the break 14-3 down.

Young lamented his side’s inability to keep possession of the ball as well as their performance in the last twenty minutes.

“I was disappointed with the way we fell away in the last 20 minutes but I can understand why we did,” said Young.

“Our biggest issue tonight was obviously possession, when we had opportunities to keep hold of the ball, we just kept on turning it over. You play against a team like Leinster, you keep turning the ball over, you keep giving them opportunities to attack you, at some point, you’re going to run out of juice.

“They’re too good a team to think you can defend against them for long periods.

“At some point, the dam was going to burst and certainly in the last 20 minutes proved to be the case. The sin bin obviously cost us dearly, they scored just before halftime and pretty much just after halftime which got them away from us. From then, it was a case of damage limitation in the last 20-25 minutes.”

Young admitted that he felt not many teams would have been able to come away with anything from a trip to face a side he summed up as ‘pretty much the Irish team.’

“You spend a lot of time analysing and looking for weaknesses and there’s not too many, pretty much. It’s pretty much the Irish team isn’t it really? And they haven’t done too bad of late have they really? You know it’s a hard day at the office and if you’re anything less than perfect, this is the type of team that can cause you problems,” said Young.

“They were good tonight, no different to what we expected but I’m a little bit disappointed with how we were with the ball because people talk about our attack being really good but we really feel that our attack at the minute is causing our defence so much problems by not keeping hold of the ball, ball retention is shocking.”