Young excited by 'different' Wasps
Dai Young is excited by his Wasps side ahead of the new season
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Last season was far from perfect in Dai Young’s book. Having reached the play-offs in the previous season, 2018/19 saw a dramatic drop-off from Wasps as the club finished eighth in what was a very competitive Premiership Rugby campaign.
However, there will be some positives for fans of the club knowing that just four points would have taken the side up to seventh in the table, a position from which Sale managed to secure Champions Cup Rugby. Director of Rugby Young says that there was a wide range of things which added up to an underwhelming season at the Ricoh Arena.
“Going into last season it was always going to be a tough season for us,” Young said. “There were lots of players out of contract, lots of speculation about people moving on and lots of injuries. So, you start the season, you don’t start too well and it’s always difficult to recapture that. Where we are at the minute, we’re in a different place.
“90% of our squad has signed for two or three years, so we’ve got that solid base. We’ve added support in the coaching team as well, academy players coming up that have all added excitement, so there is a different feel.”
Young was in attendance at Franklin’s Gardens last weekend as several of his youngsters shone at the Premiership 7’s, reaching the final before falling short to a tactically savvy Saracens side. One player in particular that stood out was Jacob Umaga. Scoring 61 points in the tournament the son of former Samoa international, Mike, has been promoted to the senior team for the first time this season.
Adding to the team’s depth at fly-half, Umaga will be playing behind Lima Sopoaga and Jimmy Gopperth. Not bad options to learn your trade under. Depth has been added throughout the Wasps squad, something that Young believes is important in order to be competitive.
“We talk about pre-season being long, but there are 16 games on the bounce, pretty much, where it is bang, bang, bang, bang, bang and obviously you’ve got to have a squad where you can rotate and rest people,” Yung continued.
“You don’t want to play people with strains, because strains become pulls and tears so you’ve got to look after it. Certainly, you’ve got to have strength in depth to achieve anything. If you look at when we were top and we got to the final; we recognised our 23 best players, we had those people starting or on the bench and they were available to us 70% of the time.
“Last season, if we do the same exercise, we’d have 30%. So, you’ve got a big swing there between winning games and losing games with your best players on the field. You need your best players on the field as much as possible, but it is unrealistic to think that they can play every game. My challenge is to rotate the squad enough so that people are getting rested and not overplaying.”
Due to the World Cup, Premiership action won’t kick off until late October, with the Premiership Cup acting as many teams’ pre-season fixtures. The longer pre-season has meant that Young has been able to work on all aspects of his sides game, with the new faces at Broadstreet bringing a breath of fresh air to one of England’s most historic clubs.
“A lot of the squad have been together for a long time, so you are going to get that change over in the squad at some point,” said Young. With new players coming on board it brings a new energy, a new excitement and academy players stepping up adds to that. So, there is a real buzz about the place.
“There is a good feel about the place at this moment in time. Everyone is happy, we haven’t lost a game yet, we haven’t won a game. We are in a good place at the minute and it is a real exciting new squad that we have put together.”
Describing the team Young and his coaching staff have put together as ‘exciting’ may be doing it a disservice. Adding World Cup winner Malakai Fekitoa, one time All Black Jeffrey Toomaga-Allen and exciting Italian fullback Matteo Minozzi to the ranks, Wasps seem to want to avoid another disappointing season.
Kicking off their campaign at home to Saracens in the Premiership Cup this Saturday, Wasps have the majority of their players available to them. Only Joe Launchbury and the aforementioned Minozzi are missing due to their Rugby World Cup selection.
It is Launchbury that will most likely be Wasps’ biggest miss. When the lock returned to the side mid-way through last season, he instantly calmed a team that was regularly faulting early in the season. Delighted for last year’s captain, Young says that when having such a high-quality player, you have to prepare for them being away.
“First and foremost, really thrilled that he is going to the World Cup. That’s the biggest thing about Joe for me because we wanted him to go to the World Cup and we wanted him to play. We miss him when he is away, because you always miss your top0quality players, but it is something that we are used to and something that we have got to plan for.”
