Weight of expectation for Sopoaga
A huge weight of expectation will rest on Lima Sopoaga’s granite shoulders when he makes his Wasps debut in London on Saturday. England’s Danny Cipriani excelled in the fly-half role for Wasps last year and his move to Gloucester left a gaping hole in the team. They laboured to an unconvincing victory over Worcester in their opener and the team clearly missed the vision, passing and ability to create space that Cipriani provided. Step forward Sopoaga, who will be asked to make his full debut just a day after arriving in the country as his new team face a huge game against Exeter Chiefs.
If you read a bookmaker review and find the best odds on the market you will see that Worcester are the odds-on favourites to finish bottom of the league this season. Beating them 21-20 is nothing to write home about, particularly when Worcester were the better team for most of the game and were unlucky not to win it when Duncan Weir’s drop-kick sailed wide. Meanwhile, Exeter are second favourites after Saracens to win the title this season, so they will provide a far sterner test when they travel to Coventry on Saturday.
Wasps can take a psychological boost from the 13-6 win they secured against Exeter in February, but they will need generate a massive improvement on last weekend’s performance. They were clumsy in attack and frequently ripped to shreds by a dogged Worcester side, and an elite team like the Chiefs would ruthlessly exploit such deficiencies. They beat Leicester 40-6 in their season opener, which proved to be a routine annihilation. Wasps are third favourites for glory this season, after Saracens and Exeter, and this game represents a great opportunity to send out a statement of intent to the rest of the league, but they need a lot more quality on the ball.
The stage is therefore perfectly set for Sopoaga to come in and wreak havoc. Billy Searle’s distribution was clunky in the Worcester game, and Sopoaga represents a significant upgrade. He should be able to feed Christian Wade, Elliott Daly, Josh Bassett and Willy Le Roux with crisp, wide passes, and improve the tempo of Wasps’ play. Sapoaga reads situations well, he frequently takes the right option and he orchestrates tries with aplomb. He could thrive under the expansive style of director of rugby Dai Young, who called the New Zealander a “world-class fly half”.
“Lima’s track record with the All Blacks, Highlanders and Southland speaks for itself, and we believe he will be an extremely good fit both in our side and within the club,” he said. “We know it’s going to take a bit of time for him to settle in but we hope he hits the ground running. He’s a different player to Danny Cipriani, different strengths and different weaknesses, but we believe that he’ll fit into the pattern that we want to play, it’s not going to be drastically different to last season. We have to tweak and change things slightly otherwise you become predictable, but we think we’ll have a bit of physicality this season that perhaps was missing on occasions last season.”
Sapoaga’s signing was announced all the way back in January, and fans have watched him excel in the southern hemisphere ever since, so his impending debut is sparking great excitement. With Nizaam Carr back in the line-up and Brad Shields set to be unleashed alongside Sapoaga, there is a real buzz around the club right now, and not even the lacklustre performance against Worcester should dent the optimism. But they could really do with a confidence-boosting victory over a strong Exeter team and the weekend and Sapoaga could be the man to deliver it.
