365 Sporting Days

More Phlog than Blog

A 4 match Flexi Ticket for Wasps for £50, including Champions Cup rugby and a match against Saracens?  It was rude not to!  The first of my 4 games was against Pro12 Champions Connacht.  The Bridesmaid turned Bride would be tough opposition for a Wasps team which included Kurtley Beale making his debut.

Beale went from her to zero all within the first 20 minutes as he crashed over to score Wasps first try after 7 minutes after a great pass from Sam Robson, before seeing yellow for a high tackle to the disgust of the home fans.  I’m not a fan of the crowd booing refereeing decisions and it happened a fair bit during this game.

Without the benefit of my own TMO or ref link I couldn’t judge from where I was sitting whether the decisions made were fair or not, but it seemed that the home crowd objected to most of the decisions made against their team.

This wasn’t going to be one way traffic and Kieran Marmion scored a try after 25 minutes to even things up.  The second half started with a Nathan Hughes try, before Rory Parata again pulled his team back into the game.

But Wasps imposed themselves on the game with a try from Joe Launchbury followed by a 5 pointer from Josh Bassett 10 minutes later.  Both teams will have known they’d been in a game, it was an entertaining affair, the return match should be as good and will be a real test of this Wasps team as far as their European aspirations are concerned.  This leg finished Wasps 32 Connacht 17.