Young: We had to defend more than we needed to (From Bucks Free Press)

Young: We had to defend more than we needed to

10:01am Monday 8th October 2012 in Sport By Andy Carswell

DAI Young was pleased with Wasps' defensive efforts against Worcester, but said his side invited far more pressure on themselves than they should have done.

The Adams Park side's director of rugby said the overall performance against the Warriors wouldn't have been good enough to have beaten many teams as Wasps struggled to a 10-6 victory.

They came under severe late pressure in an injury time assault from Worcester but, symptomatically of the game as a whole, the move only broke down after a Warriors knock-on.

Young said: "We showed a lot of heart and a lot of determination in the last three or four minutes to keep them out but we shouldn't have been in that position.

"I don't think we would have beaten many teams today with that performance, but we found a way to win. You've got to be a little bit pleased you've come away with a win but we know we have to be better.

"I made my thoughts quite clear to the players on numerous occasions.

"I thought our ball retention within the striking zone was really poor, our kicking game was second best - they outkicked us when they needed to outkick us. Certainly second half our set piece fell apart. The scrum fell apart and our line-out was nowhere near as fluid as it normally is, and we ended up defending for big periods."

Wasps failed to build on the bright start afforded them by prop Simon McIntyre's early try as they struggled to get going in attack.

Young was far more pleased with his side's defensive efforts, with the forwards having to mop up because of the backs' failure to penetrate the visiting defence.

He said: "That's an area where we've struggled the first couple of weeks. Today we've had a lot of pressure put on our defence when there didn't need to be. We ended up defending more today than we needed to.

"There was far more bite in our defence, there was far more attitude. We gave them opportunities with the ball when they shouldn't have had it."

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