Tries from Hala’ufia and Thorpe plus Hewat’s reliable boot are enough to sink the champions

London Irish 26 - 14 London Wasps

By Danny Coyle at Twickenham

Clearly, London Wasps just plain don’t like the start of the season. The Guinness Premiership champions were a shadow of the side that had hauled itself up by the bootstraps and bludgeoned its way to the title at the end of last season.

Back at Twickenham three months since that balmy afternoon when over 80,000 stood to give the departing Lawrence Dallaglio a rousing send off and then see the old warrior hoist the trophy, there was no Lawrence, and not much sign of the team he had led that day either.

Shaun Edwards had declared earlier last week that Wasps were not out to defend their title, but to win it again. Any way you slice it, on this evidence, neither looks likely.
But we have been here before with London Wasps, and only a fool would write them off with the season in its embryonic stage.

We have also been listening all summer to players and coaches tell us they’ll only be able to assess the impact of the ELVs after a month or so of the new season. In fact, the Guinness Premiership was just nine minutes old when we saw the effect one of the changes could have.

Admittedly, there were some very familiar forces in play as London Irish went ahead, but the fact was that the Exiles had stacked their lineout with seven players to Wasps five, as is now permitted.

So when Nick Kennedy did what he had been doing all last season and disrupted Raphael Ibanez’s traditionally dubious throw to Richard Birkett at the front of Wasps lineout, Chris Hala’ufia, one of those extra men hanging around at the tail of the lineout, was able to pounce on the loose ball untroubled and flop over the line.

The Tongan’s next act was to head to the sin bin after a high tackle but his error went unpunished as Van Gisbergen missed his second penalty attempt of the day, his failure compounded by Peter Hewat’s accuracy on 20 minutes when he made it 10-0 after Wasps hands in a ruck slowed down a move the Australian full back had started from deep in his own territory.

The former Waratah was on target again two minutes before half- time in a half that Irish dominated thanks to some pinpoint kicking from halfbacks Paul Hodgson and Mike Catt who kept the champions’ back three hemmed on their own goal line for much of the first 40 minutes.

The theme continued in the second half and it was another hashed Wasps lineout that presented the ball to Exiles back row Richard Thorpe who powered through a rare flimsy tackle from his opposite number Joe Worsley before avoiding Tom Voyce and skating over the line.

Hewat kicked the conversion and two further penalties either side of a Tom Rees try for Wasps, which was added to by Eoin Reddan who scampered over from a scrum with barely five minutes remaining to put an air of respectability on the score line that was scarcely deserved.