London Irish 26 Wasps 14: Hewat swats sluggish Wasps

Lawrence Dallaglio, your club, if not your country, needs you urgently. Wasps, believe it or not, won the Guinness Premiership last season, but you would never have guessed it from their performance here yesterday.

The champions are notor-iously slow starters – they usually hit the big time at Twickenham in May, when they tend to win Premierships or Heineken Cups – but this was a second-class flight in every respect.

London Irish were sharper, keener, quicker and far hungrier.They won by two goals and four penalties to two goals, and were worth every point. It was all the more surprising because the hugely influential lock-forward Bob Casey had to withdraw with a broken wrist incurred in a "friendly" match with Munster and their brightest young thing, the fly-half Shane Geraghty, also had to pull out after damaging an ankle.

Mike Catt, who has been promoted to backs coach after the departure to England of Brian Smith, had to start at No 10 and, despite his near-pensionable age, the former England inter-national made a pretty good job of it. In fact, Catt stood up extremely well against Riki Flutey, who is supposed to play a part in England's future. Admittedly, Catt had the better service.

And then there was the headto-head between the full-backs: Peter Hewat of the Irish and Mark van Gisbergen. Hewat had a 100 per cent kicking record; Van Gisbergen struck an upright with a penalty attempt that would have put his side ahead. Perhaps it was a sign that it was not their day. Within eight minutes Wasps, fiddling with the Experimental Law Variations that have been introduced this season, reduced the number of men in their line-out and the upshot was that the Irish No 8, Chris Hala'Ufia, was able to exploit a stupid tap-back and score a simple try.

He went from hero to villain in the space of minutes after tripping Eoin Reddan, but again Van Gisbergen failed with the penalty attempt. When Josh Lewsey then dropped a kick on his own 22, the Irish were awarded a penaltywhich Hewat landed to make it 13-0. That remained the score at half-time, although the wing Sailosi Tagicakibau made a devastating break that could have increased the lead.

Early in the second half Wasps, who must have been given a real rollicking at half-time, wereagain absent without leave at a line-out, leaving the Irish flanker Richard Thorpe to charge through for a try from about 20 yards. Hewat's conversion made it 20-0, but then Wasps managed to salvage something.

On the hour Tom Rees, who had been fairly anonymous in the Wasps back row, plucked the ball out of the back of a ruck and strolled over, almost Houdini-like, while everybody seemed to be looking the other way.

Catt drew applause with a heroic attempt at a drop goal. It went wide, but the Irish had already been awarded a penaltywhich Hewat slotted for 23-7. The former New South Wales full-back then made it 26-7before Reddan, with six minutes remaining, gave Wasps the slightest glimmer of hope with a trademark try to cut the deficit to 12 points, the replacement Jeremy Staunton adding the conversion.

Wasps, who belatedly felt obliged to start putting up some competition, might even have salvaged a losing bonus point in the final minutes when Joe Worsley was going for a try close to the posts after a kick had been charged down. Although he was impeded by Hewat, the referee, Andrew Small, a New Zealander now attached to the London Society, decided to take noaction. There was a case for a penalty try or at least a card to the full-back, but then the Irish had had similar claims.

At least referee Small was on first name terms with the 13 ELVs, but apart from some aimless kicking from one end of the pitch to the other, they did not seem to have a dramatic effect on the game. There could have been 41 new laws introduced, but 13 already seemed too many.

London Irish: P Hewat; T Ojo, D Armitage, S Mapusua, S Tagicakibau; M Catt (capt; E Hickey, 65), P Hodgson (P Richards, 72); A Corbisiero (D Murphy, 48), D Coetzee (D Paice, 60), F Rautenbach (J Buckland, 60), N Kennedy, G Johnson, R Thorpe, C Hala'Ufia, S Armitage.

London Wasps: M van Gisbergen (L Mitchell, 69); P Sackey, D Waldouck, J Lewsey (J Staunton, 40), T Voyce; R Flutey, E Reddan; T Payne, R Ibanez (capt; R Webber, 68), P Barnard (P Vickery, 51), S Shaw, R Birkett (T Palmer, 51), J Worsley, J Haskell, T Rees.

Referee: A Small (London).

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