The last time Wasps visited Headingley it was the final regular season game of the 2007/8 season. A beautiful spring day, two clubs heading in opposite directions fought a battle worthy of the conditions, the scoreline finishing 45-28 to the visitors. After the match, the players of both sides sprawled on the pitch in the sun, contemplating the season they'd just played. Wasps were heading for the play-offs, Leeds for National Division One, but there hadn't seemed much between the teams on the day, in truth. As Mark McMillan, soon to be leaving for Glasgow, donned a silly hat, the fans drifted off to the clubhouse or the pubs of Headingley to continue the day's entertainment.

It wasn't the only game taking place at Headingley that day. Across the way, over the Paddock Stand, a cricket match was in progress, the inheritors of Hutton, Sutcliffe and Trueman negotiating the famously seamer-friendly pitch in bright whites as the late afternoon sun slanted across the ground. You could almost hear Geoff Boycott's voice hovering above the whole: “Pitch it up, lad! Get it in corridor of uncertainty!” Apart from the image of Boycs, however, it was idyllic. On that day, rugby and cricket seemed made for identical conditions. You couldn't imagine the cricketers labouring under an unforgiving July sun, the outfield starting to turn brown, the pitch a bare, grassless, glassy strip. And you couldn't imagine the rugby players slogging through the mud on a dark winter's afternoon, scrummaging and rucking for inches of gain, up-and-unders falling like howitzer shells from the clouds. It was a day that you wished all sporting days were like...and so few are.

Sunday, of course, is the last day of February, in the middle of one of the coldest winters in years. Looking at the Leeds-Tigers game from a couple of weeks ago, I think it's fair to say that the corridor of uncertainty on the Headingley pitch currently extends from touchline to touchline. The ground is soft, grassless like a high summer cricket pitch, susceptible to a bit of turn but not what you'd call fast. The question is, do you plant yourself in your crease and defend, or risk getting out to the pitch of the ball and attacking?

Last week's victory for Wasps over Sarries was the former, a performance built on a pack display worthy of the name and a very disciplined defence. It was enough to beat Sarries on the day but it is worth remembering that it was just such a gameplan that Leeds imposed on Wasps back in November. Subsequent victories against Newcastle and Sale (both away from home), and a bonus point against Leicester just a couple of weeks ago, speak for the effectiveness of Leeds' approach. It may not win you Heineken Cups or Guinness Premiership titles, but if you are trying to consolidate your position in the league and give yourself something to build on in the future, it is just the sort of approach that will win you one-off games against practically any team in the table. Especially at this time of year. Strangely, all Leeds' victories so far have been away from home. But that will only make them more determined to replicate their travelling success in front of their own fans at Headingley. Make no mistake, this is going to be a tough old game for Wasps, and I suspect they will have to play better than last week to win.

At the moment, Leeds don't look like a team that is ready to be relegated when spring eventually arrives. Currently sitting just one point behind eleventh placed team Worcester in the Premiership, they are playing more effective rugby than several of the clubs above them (as Sale found out last week). Guided from half back by Andy Gomarsall and Ceiron Thomas, driven up front by the likes of Marco Wentzel, Erik Lund and the unlikely sounding Saxon Hendre Fourie, uncompromising in midfield and solid in defence across the line, Neil Back's team are confounding those (me included) who thought that building a team to compete in the Premiership was not a job that could be done in a single season. Their match against Worcester at the end of April could be a defining one for the Leeds club...but then again, the way they're going, they could have sewn up their Premiership status long before that.

For Wasps, all that matters is getting a win. Fourth in the league, level on points with fifth-placed London Irish, they have to keep on securing victories to pressure the clubs above them. The last two weeks have shown the team to be more capable of winning forward-based arm-wrestles than they were when playing Newcastle and Leeds earlier in the season, but the desire to attack, to play a multi-dimensional game, is inevitable given the players we have in our back-line. The art of doing this successfully, of course, is knowing when to attack and when to play it safe (a skill that Tom Varndell, for one, will be desperately hoping to perfect in the weeks to come). Whether the conditions at Headingley on Sunday, both overhead and underfoot, will permit any choice in the matter at all, remains to be seen. But if we can successfully wed the solidity and strength at set-piece and in the breakdown that we saw against Sarries last weekend, with the counter-attacking, heads-up rugby that the likes of Mark van Gisbergen, Danny Cipriani and the aforementioned Varndell are designed for, then staying in contention for the play-offs will be all the easier. It has to start soon, though. It has to start at Headingley on Sunday.

Prediction: Wasps to edge it

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