'A bad day in the office' - Blackett unhappy as Wasps flop at home
Lee Blackett called for his side to cut out the mistakes after Wasps fell to a 23-8 defeat at home against Bristol in the Gallagher Premiership.
Callum Sheedy scored 18 points for the visitors, with Magnus Bradbury adding a further five as the Bears secured their second win from their opening two games.
In contrast, Wasps are still without a victory despite veteran hooker Tom Cruse giving his side the perfect start at Coventry Building Society Arena.
And Blackett blasted a mistake-ridden performance from his side, who currently sit 11th in the table with just one bonus point to their name.
He said: “The number of opportunities out there, you look and you reflect and you’re thinking, it wasn’t like we looked clueless at times, we were creating opportunities.
“We just made far too many mistakes with the ball, that’s why I’m constantly saying we’ve got to improve our skill set and that’s what we want from Wasps players.
“I think if you’d seen us in pre-season, I saw us heading in the right direction in terms of that. I think it’s a bad day in the office but we have got to be constantly working on that and that is the direction we are going in – we’re working really hard on our skills and we’ve got to work even harder.
“It’s a little bit of the story of the week before. You’ve got guys so passionate about playing for this club and everything like that. I just think we made quite a few mistakes around the contact area, whether it was stripped, whether it was on the floor, so it’s not just out-and-out handling errors.”
Bristol are currently second and director of rugby Pat Lam felt the win showed the progress made by the team in recent years.
He said: “It was the first one for us as a group since I arrived but the first win here in the league for the club for 22 years. It was a massive marker for us and certainly a monkey off our back. To go back-to-back having beaten them last year at home as well is good.
“It certainly wasn’t the prettiest game, but at the end of the day five points were on offer and we took four today and we deprived them of points too, so I am really pleased.
“Our defence and the character of the boys was outstanding, they just worked their way through the adversity.
“They [the two wins] haven’t been the free-flowing game we would like, they only made 80 tackles and we made 220 tackles and that is some serious character to do that because you can see they have got some serious threats.”
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Disagree.
The challenge for the All Blacks now that they have 7 of 8 starting forwards locked in and all but one bench forward (only one loose forward and bench loosie to settle on) is to sort out the starting backline as only 9 Roigard, 12 J. Barrett, 11 Clarke and 15 Jordan had good to outstanding seasons in 2024. All the other backs were inconsistent or poor and question marks going into 2025.
Go to commentshe should not be playing 12. He should be playing 10 and team managers should stop playing players out of position to accommodate libbok.
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