French learning curve for Wasps

The English outfit bowed out of the Europe Cup competition with an 18-32 quarterfinal defeat at the hands defending champions, Toulon.

 

Wasps staged a great second-half comeback to rattle the champions, but most of the damage had already been done.

 

"I'm really proud of the effort and the commitment, especially in the second half," he said. 

 

"But that's mixed with a lot of frustration from the first half.

 

"I think we gave them a little too much respect in the first 30 minutes. We didn't trust our defence and attack, to be honest.

 

"We gave away silly penalties when we didn't need it, and we had something like seven turnovers.

 

"Coming into this week, I believed that was going to be a massive learning phase for us. 

 

"We made it quite clear that we can mix it with the top teams. We are a good team, but we still have things to work on.

 

"We still need to have that belief in our defence, because we gave two penalties away on slow ball – which we don't need. 

 

"We gave away two penalties when they already had won the ball in the line-out, we don't need that either.

 

"We were a little bit frantic, a little bit panicky, not having enough trust in ourselves. But we learned from that, and I think we did some really good stuff on occasions.

 

"So again, proud of the effort because we were in there until the end, but frustrated because we didn't fight for our chance in the first half.

 

"The top four teams that have been consistent in the past seasons are up there.

 

"When you go to Toulon or Clermont, you're going to have problems.

 

"They have world class players across the board and there is no room for error."