Paul Sackey scored two tries and replacement Matt Dawson raced away for the last score just before time to seal four points for the Champions.

The Falcons had been rocked before the match by news that David Walder had failed a fitness test and Stuart Grimes also pulled out due to injury.  Ollie Phillips however made his first start since breaking a leg in March, and Mark Mayerhofler started his 50^th Premiership match.

Phillips, wearing 14, played on the left wing with Mathew Tait on the right.  Despite just returning from injury, this put him up against Sackey, one of the fastest men in the game, who duly outpaced Phillips for the opening try although it looked to many that he’d been nudged out of play by a tackle.  Whatever, the touch judge decided not and as Mark Van Gisbergen missed the conversion, Wasps were 5-0 ahead.

Matthew Burke attempted to reduce the deficit with a penalty on halfway and although he missed, he atoned minutes later from an identical position.  Wasps then began to take a hold on the game, with a good attack in which Tait was blocked from tackling ending only with a knock-on.  After half an hour, we took the lead with another Burke penalty, but it was a brief respite.

Van Gisbergen’s second kick is the post, and then we were seemingly penalized for holding on (most people thought that was the only explanation, given Wayne Barnes’ signals) despite Wasps being in possession of the ball!  The three points sent the hosts into half time with an 8-6 lead, totally deserved.

Mike McCarthy replaced Owen Finegan during the interval, but rarely in the third quarter did we even venture into the Wasps half.  Sackey scored his second try on the far right, which again went unconverted, but the game was slipping away and when Andy Long was yellow-carded in front of goal and Van Gisbergen kicked for a 10-point advantage it seemed the points would stay in Wycombe.

However, coming up to about 65 minutes, we made out first real attack of the half and gave it a decent go to get to the Wasps line.  Unfortunately we just couldn’t make the breakthrough though, our best chance being a Burke penalty which was pulled wide.  With just a couple of minutes left, Wasps replacement Matt Dawson stole the ball and ran from his own half to dive for the third and last unconverted try.  Wasps marched on with a 21-6 victory which was more comprehensive than the scoreline suggests, the Falcons again look nervously over their shoulders at Leeds.

I can’t put my finger on exactly where we went wrong today, we had enough ball to be able to mount some attacks, but I think just Wasps are such a fast and powerful team we were unable to break through enough tackles or kick well enough to mount any sustainable pressure until late on.  Toby Flood had a terrible kicking game – not only did we only look to have kicked to touch once in the whole game, his chases after high kicks looked awfully lethargic.  If Walder had been playing his kicking would have allowed us the breathing space required to think and also take on Wasps within their half of the pitch, but when you face a back row of Dallaglio, Worsley and Hart, and backs of the quality of Lewsey, Staunton and Van Gisbergen, you need to be on top form or at least have everyone up for the fight with their heads on.  We didn’t have this today.

So we have another break for Europe, with Borders and Brive finishing off our group stage matches.  It would be surprising if we didn’t get a home quarter-final, however the game in France is the crunch as we need to win their to ensure a home semi-final.  Although relegation is still a possibility, and we have to beat Saracens in three weeks to fight that battle, Europe has to be a focus too in order to try our best and get back into the Heineken Cup, which is where we simply HAVE to be.

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