Wasps' Tony Hanks revealed that Danny Cipriani played through the pain barrier in their 24-22 loss against Gloucester.
Fly-half stays on the pitch despite sore ankle
Wasps assistant coach Tony Hanks has revealed that Danny Cipriani played through the pain barrier in their 24-22 Guinness Premiership loss against Gloucester.
Despite suffering the after-effects of his horror ankle injury last year, the young fly-half made a try for team-mate Lachlan Mitchell.
However, the efforts of Wasps and Cipriani were in vain - tries from Olly Morgan, Iain Balshaw and Akapusi Qera setting up a win that took the Cherry and Whites clear at the top of the league.
Hanks said: "Danny's problem was his ankle that he injured last year. There are times when it just becomes really sore. He played through quite a bit of pain today.
"If it had been any other day we might have brought him off but we are pleased that he really toughed it out."
Cipriani was not the only Wasps player in the wars as Josh Lewsey was forced off after just 12 minutes of play.
The latter was replaced by Dave Walder, who subsequently kicked five penalties - Cipriani switching from fly-half to full-back.
Lewsey walked around Kingsholm unaided after the match but Hanks added: "Losing Josh early did not help, of course.
"He has been in great form and pretty instrumental in what we have been doing.
"He has taken a really bad knock on the quad just above the knee. There is no way he could have carried on as it was quite swollen and he was in quite a bit of pain."
Of the game, Hanks said: "We probably did have an opportunity to steal it at the end but, ultimately, we are really proud of this group.
"To have a chance of winning down at Kingsholm is good. We are just disappointed we did not get the result."
Less than emphatic
With Olly Barkley being off form with the boot, Gloucester head coach Dean Ryan acknowledged the victory could have been a lot more emphatic.
"I think it was tighter than it needed to be," he said. "I think we missed 20 or 21 points from the boot and I don't think we ever got more than a two or three point gap.
"You just cannot afford to do that against Wasps because they are pretty smart in finding wins from games they have not had that much dominance in.
"We have to look at the kicking but we also lost composure in that last half hour and became a little bit individual.
"If we had stuck to our guns, I thought there was a bonus point there for us which is disappointing."
He added: "The scrum was going to be a factor when they lost some key individuals and we would have wanted to get more dominance from it.
"The game didn't really get going and had no flow in it which is frustrating for us because we have to look to be better in that area and, in a clean contact area, we can generally cause a bit of damage.
"Those tries (Morgan and Balshaw) were long-range efforts and we had a lot of field position where you would normally back us to cause problems but I don't think we ever got fast contact-area possession."
