Wasps threw away a 25-point lead as they lost at the Ricoh Arena for the first time since making the move from High Wycombe, with a try in the final minute securing Cardiff Blues a 45-42 win in the LV Cup.

Tries from Will Helu, Sailosi Tagicakibau, Guy Thompson, two from Thomas Young and a penalty try, all of which were converted by Alex Lozowski, weren’t enough for the hosts who had looked to be cruising to victory before taking off some of their key players.

Cardiff rallied from 42-17 down with 56 minutes on the clock to snatch victory through Miles Normandale’s score with the last move of the match.

For Dai Yoiung’s team to progress in the tournament they must now win well at Northampton and hope that Cardiff can do them a favour by beating Leicester in the final round of pool matches.

Answering the post match questions, defence coach Bradley Davis stated that losing from such a commanding position was simply not good enough.

He said: “To score 42 points at home and be on the losing side tells the story really. What we did with ball in hand was good but defensively we just weren’t good enough.

“Defensively we weren’t at the races and that’s something I’m going to have to look at and put right.”

Wasps had built up a 21-0 lead with 21 minutes on the clock as Helu scored the first before a penalty try was awarded with Young also going over as the home side swarmed all over their opponents.

Macauley Cook responded before Lewis Jones scored to reduce the deficit to seven points. Tagicakibau and Young added further tries for Wasps before half-time to make the score 35-17 at the break.

Thompson then struck before Normandale notched his first try of the match. Lucas Amorosino scored before Seb Davies set the alarm bells ringing when he crashed over with 15 minutes left.

And just as it looked like the Blues had run out of time, Normandale went over in the corner after the visitors had somehow kept the ball alive.

Davis felt Wasps’ raft of changes, which included debuts for James Small-Edwards and Oskar Hirskyj-Douglas, may have impacted the final result.

He said: “There was probably a bit of a swing in there, taking off some of our more senior players but with the lead we had at half-time we should have been good enough to build on that lead.

“We couldn’t really put any phases of pressure together, we had a lot of turnover ball in that second 40 and if you do make those errors and then aren’t prepared to defend well you are going to be on the wrong end. Cardiff definitely grew into the game and we allowed them to do that.”