Young blames defence for defeat in Bath (From Bucks Free Press)

Flimsy Wasps buckle in Bath

10:44am Monday 10th September 2012 in Sport By Alan Feldberg

DAI Young has blamed his teams defence for their loss at Bath on Saturday.

They were beaten 30-23, but were architects of their own downfall with a misplaced pass leading to one Bath try and six missed tackles leading to another.

Tom Biggs’ profited from the first error as Nicky Robinson’s wayward pass hit Tom Palmer’s hip and bounced loose, before Kyle Eastmond squirmed out of six tackles to touch down in the second half.

Director of rugby Young said: “Defensively we have to get better. If you look at their two tries, it was poor decision-making. Players were stepping in when they didn’t need to step in and I think for Eastman’s try five people fell off tackles.

“We had at least two really poor defensive lapses to give them easy points.”

Wasps were also culpable when Matt Banahan crossed for the first try, with Christian Wade coming off his wing and being cut out by one pass wide.

Young said: “We all know what Christian can do in attack, but there is a defensive aspect to the game too which I think our outside backs need to brush up on.

“As well as he’s marked very heavily with the ball in hand, we’ve got to make sure that teams aren’t targeting our outside backs as weaknesses.”

Wasps were also more laboured going forward, showing none of the vim that caused had Harlequins such a headache the previous weekend.

Young said: “I thought we looked dangerous in broken play, and that was about it. We lacked any patience when we had the ball to build any pressure or momentum, and were off-loading when it wasn’t on.

“Anything loose and we looked dangerous, but we didn’t construct or built anything ourselves.

“You have to earn the right to play rugby and I don’t think we did. We had to match up physically but I think we struggled to get over the gain line and play front-foot ball.

“Then we were looking for that magic pass which wasn’t quite on, and we’d lose the ball and have to defend again.

“But I’m confident we’ll get better every game and in every aspect. It will probably take us another three or four weeks to gel together, but we’re not a million miles from it.”

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