Lawrence Dallaglio was thrilled with Wasps' dramatic late win against Bristol, which he says came in the face of big losses due to international fixtures.
Dallaglio blasts RFU for international fixture clashes.
Lawrence Dallaglio was thrilled with Wasps' dramatic late win against Bristol, which he says came in the face of big losses due to international fixtures.
Wasps had to make six changes to their side as they beat Bristol 32-30 with an injury time try from Mark McMillan at Adams Park.
Despite the joy of the win, Dallaglio was not happy with the continuing fixture clash with the Six Nations which meant Wasps were missing a host of their big-name players.
Although they managed to win without England's Phil Vickery, Simon Shaw, Paul Sackey, James Haskell and Danny Cipriani and Ireland's Eoin Reddan, Dallaglio says things must be done to stop Guinness Premiership side from losing their best players during the season.
Problems
"Why should we be penalised?" asked Dallaglio. "The fans get short-changed.
"They're not seeing the best players on the pitch and I think the league and the RFU need to knock their heads together.
"We gave a huge amount at the World Cup and we need to get that reciprocated, otherwise we'll have to think about recruitment in different ways.
"Rightly or wrongly we've just got to get on with it, but it affects us more than anybody. It's difficult when you're missing so many, but you've just got to hang in there and 10 points from our last two games is a massive lift for us."
Wasps improved from eighth to sixth in the table and still hope to make the play-offs, but Dallaglio says t hey need to improve.
"If we want to win trophies we need to sharpen our act up," he added. "We made some careless mistakes and it nearly cost us.
"But we fought hard and it was about keeping our composure at the end - it only takes a few seconds to score. We've got momentum now and we have to maintain that."
Bristol beaten
Bristol's director of rugby Richard Hill said his side should have already had the match in the bag before Wasps grabbed their dramatic victory.
"It's our own fault - we should have finished them off," he said. "We had two opportunities we didn't take and paid the price.
"Wasps did really well with so many players away and I give huge credit to them, but there's a lot of good things to take from the game. That's only our second four-try display of the season and we're showing a much better attacking attitude.
"We scored only 18 tries in the first 11 games, so I set 27 as the target for the remaining 11. We had two against Gloucester and four here, so after concentrating on defence for four or five years we've made some huge and remarkable strides forward.
"That's the sort of rugby I like to watch, even though we lost. The signs are good."
