The Young Ones

However, from what I saw and heard you would be thinking incorrectly. The mood was if anything relatively sombre and introspective.

Many supporters bemoaned our lack of a cutting edge and our inability to put a clearly inferior team to the sword.

Others were simply critical of our style of play, describing it as rugby to stop the pulse' rather than set it racing'.

While I share some of these concerns, especially our inability to turn the screw when the pressure is on, I'm afraid I simply refuse to go along with the twilight-zone thinking that is tending to dominate the atmosphere around our current home at Edgeley Park. I'm more concerned with other matters, but that can wait.

Perhaps we aren't equipped to throw the ball around like they do in Super 14 - maybe we don't have the players who are comfortable or skilful enough to play that way.

Who am I to judge? I haven't represented my country at the highest level so am not qualified to pass comment.

All I will say is that while Super 14 may be frenetically paced and fantastic to watch at times, that style of play doesn't necessarily win a game. Ask the Southern Hemisphere players who were unceremoniously dumped out of the World Cup at the weekend and sent home to re-discover the art of humility.

Sometimes pragmatism and a slightly more conservative approach to a game is the more effective way to go.

Like many of our more critical supporters I, too, remember the halcyon and, dare I say, rose-tinted days of Heywood Road.

Without a doubt we could be fantastic on our day and a joy to watch but I seem to remember we lost as many as we won, if not more.

Philippe Saint-Andre and Kingsley Jones have changed our style of play without a doubt, adding physicality and brute force to our side. As a consequence we generally tend to win more than we lose now, with the exception of last year when fate dealt us a rather cruel hand.

I might not be altogether happy with the way we always play the game and the style with which we do it but I do prefer to be on a wining side.

I'm still as perplexed as (Wasps director of rugby) Ian MacGeechan about how we didn't manage to inflict greater humiliation on a Wasps side that was as poor as I've seen play at Edgeley Park.

We managed to nil them for the first time in 32 years of competitive rugby but we should've secured a winning bonus point too. Why this didn't happen is beyond me.

We dominated territorially from the outset and out-thought and outplayed them throughout the course of the whole game.

Our pack was dominant, our set-piece as good as it's been all season, our penalty count was thankfully minimal and our open, running back play as slick and fluid as I've seen for some time, but we just couldn't break them down.

Mind you, perhaps I shouldn't be over-critical. Any team whose defence is marshalled by Shaun Edwards, love him or hate him, is never going to be a pushover.

The rush defence that Wasps employ has served them well over the years and is generally effective against most teams.

Let's not forget, this same team, bar for one or two minor changes, pushed a second string Leicester Tigers close last week. Maybe Wasps weren't as poor as I've suggested but were made to look that way by our team.

James Haskell, the very highly-rated back row forward, was anonymous. Magnus Lund and Chris Jones made sure of that.

Danny Cipriani, who was fortunate to stay on the pitch for the full 80 minutes, is one of England's brightest prospects, but he'll probably see Ben Foden in his nightmares and dread any future high balls that come his way.

Whether England comes a-calling for him or not is in the hands of others but, it's always worth remembering, reputation means nothing in rugby. You're only as good as your last game - a lesson our Antipodean friends and perhaps some of our World Cup stars might also care to remember.

Before the season started our coaches issued a challenge to the remaining members of the squad: if you want to cement a place in the team, go out and prove your worth and fight for the shirt.

Well, Lund, Foden, Sean Cox, Neil Briggs, David Tait and Lee Thomas have done just that. They've improved with every game and against Wasps they put in their most effective performance to date, with Thomas, Foden and Cox shining brightly.

What more can they do to keep their place when our absent stars return?

That's the $64,000 question. Personally I can't see how Thomas can ever expect to retain his place when Luke McAlister joins us in November.

Too much money has been staked on his reputation as one of rugby's superstars. How can you not play him in the circumstances?

This is what concerns and troubles me. It must be incredibly demoralising to know that even if you play out of your skin, there's every chance that you'll still slip back to being either just a fringe player once again or a bench-warmer.

Who would you choose, given the choice and opportunity between Cox and Jones, Foden or Rory Lamont, or Thomas and McAlister?

I know I'd struggle in my mind, though I suspect my heart would probably rule my head. Then again, that's why I'm not a Premiership coach. Fortunately I don't have to make those decisions.

Perhaps it's worth bearing in mind though that sometimes words said off the cuff, without the necessary thought about consequences, can occasionally come back to bite at the most unexpected times.

Remember the promises about Edgeley Park that were made at Heywood Road? That's nearly four years ago now and the consequences still rumble on.

Maybe words are sometimes best left unsaid?