By apb
September 21 2004

What is this? Leeds taking the field first? They always come out second at home don't they? And yet there they were in the famous yellow Leeds away strip.... Hold on? Isn't that Lawrence Dallaglio? What's he doing playing for Leeds? Yup! Due to "contractual obligations" and an embarrassing cock-up from the Wasps kit man, the European and Zurich Premiership champions took the Sunday evening pitch sporting the Leeds away kit! Round one in the mind games to Leeds I feel! (Leeds & Holbeck Building Society must have been feeling pretty smug too!).

Sadly, that was the last thing that Leeds came out on top of that night, since the score belonged to the London boys.

An early exchange of penalties brought the score to 3-3, and some sharp phases and crisp passing from the Tykes showed that they were clearly a much improved team from that which took the field against Gloucester and, I'm led to believe, Leicester. The final ball was missing however, and there was never really a danger of crossing the Wasps line.

Wasps themselves were a bit shaky, and were fairly routinely held at bay by a strong Leeds defence, although it has to be said that the centre partnership seemed to make plenty of yards through the Leeds line before being hauled down. Contrast this with Leeds' struggle to make the yards against a well-organised Wasps defence who always seemed to be one step ahead of the Leeds backs!

Finally the inevitable happened, and one slip in the tackling saw Wasps' Tom Voyce with a searing run down the left, with prop Will Green there to take the scoring pass and to touch down just to the left of the posts. The simplest of conversions for King and it was 10-3.

A penalty five minutes later allowed Gordon Ross to bring the score back to 10-6, but Alan Dickens was sin-binned shortly after for over-enthusiastic rucking. This brought Diego Albanese in at scrum-half for the ten minutes, and I guess it was a credit to the Leeds 14 left on the park that Wasps were unable to produce anything other than a drop-goal for their efforts. Mind you, a DG from LBND? Not something you see every day!!! Goggsy slotted another penalty to bring the score back to 13-9, and had a chance for another near the end of the half, but scurfed it just left.

The second half, from an attacking point of view wasn't as good as the first. Wasps were unable to get in the Leeds half for large parts of the half, and Leeds never looked like they would let another try through, although again there were a few too many yards made by some of the Wasps line to leave the partisan Leeds crowd particularly comfortable. More worrying though, was the lack of ideas and penetration in attack. If the first half showed crisp passing, the second reverted more to type, with passes going to ground, to the opposition and in one case, straight in to touch.

It was enthralling though, and while there were no further scores in the half, it made for a good spectacle nonetheless. While perhaps demoralised that it was another loss, and another in the increasingly incorrectly styled "Fortress Headingley", the crowd can take heart that this was - largely - a good performance.

Players to note were Jon Dunbar who looked menacing at ever breakdown, and many times terrorised the Wasps loose play with his bullocking runs through the opposition, and indeed all the forwards played well. In the back line, Phil Christophers looked quiet compared to his normal extremely high standards, and Gordon Ross is still struggling with decision making in a tight situation. Diego Albanese, playing in three different positions during the game, was perhaps the only one of the backs who consistently looked dangerous and made yards. The biggest cheer of the evening for an individual came when the newly emerging Leeds Legend Tom Biggs came on with 20 to go.

All in all, while still a loss, while its still worrying that Leeds are "joint tenth" in the ZP, the marked improvement in the play shows that Leeds will be a force to be reckoned with, and with the imminent arrival of Tim Stimpson, Iain Balshaw and Rayno Gerber, there could - and should - be good times just around the corner.....