Unfortunately, the league table won't take notice of such things at the end of the season, and should Bristol beat London Irish by 20 points or with a bonus point on Sunday, we will be 12^th and even the management will have to admit we are in trouble.

Before the game last night, one fan said he would leave after ten minutes if the game went the same way as the Irish match a couple of weeks ago. It did begin in a similar way, with the Falcons scoring early through a powerful run on the right from Danny Williams, who is starting to show some potential. Rory Clegg converted, and so we could all go home now.

Mightn't have been a bad idea, it was damn cold (-1 in the car heading to KP) but the crowd made it a bit warmer. I'm sure the attendance was higher than announced last night. Clegg traded penalties with one of his predecessors in our number 10 shirt, Dave Walder, on the quarter hour before Walder chipped away at our lead and a fifth kick just before the break put his side 10-15 ahead at half time.

Having read one fan's defence of why kicking is a good option sometimes, I agree. The problem is that we waste so much possession that we forget this can be done well sometimes. And when the boot is the best option, for example when we were struggling on our five-metre line and Wasps had left space behind their left winger, we did played ball-in-hand and conceded yet another penalty.

The second half began as the first one did, with excellent team play leading the Falcons up to the Wasps 22 and Tom May driving over for a second try, which Clegg again converted. A nasty injury to Pat Barnard held the game up for a couple of minutes, taking a bit of sting out of the crowd. We weren't playing well anyway, but at least at 17-15 we were winning. That was much more important.

Ed Williamson's sin-binning saw Walder kick Wasps back into the lead, and as the Falcons tried in vain to score again, replacement Charlie Beech's last-minute score sealed victory as even though the conversion missed, we needed a conversion ourselves.

We wasted two excellent try-scoring chances late on, once through chipping through the main defensive line in the 22 straight into Wasp hands, and another when Spencer Davey (I think) beat a number of defenders but came inside rather than getting his head down and legging it towards the posts. It's horrible to see such a lack of confidence.

Most people will have seen the game, so there's not much more to say, and not much I really want to say. That's why we just left straight after the final whistle. We have had three very winnable league games in November from which we should have been looking for a minimum of eight or nine points. We got one, a bonus point last night thanks to a missed Wasps conversion.

And that means that tomorrow we will all be a little bit Oirish for the day. And wonder how it came to be that Leicester away is a must-win game.

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