Wasps head coach Lee Blackett rued his side’s mistakes in their 23-8 loss to Bristol in round two of the Premiership.
Blackett’s men started well with veteran Tom Cruse crashing over early on, but mistakes let Bristol back into the game with Callum Sheedy racking up 18 points on the night.
Poor start to the season
Wasps sit in 11th place on the table after only securing one point in the opening two rounds of the season.
The 39-year-old said his team did not look “clueless” and created opportunities that their mistakes ruined.
“The number of opportunities out there, you look and you reflect and you’re thinking, it wasn’t like we looked clueless at times, we were creating opportunities,” Blackett said.
“We just made far too many mistakes with the ball, that’s why I’m constantly saying we’ve got to improve our skill set and that’s what we want from Wasps players.
“I think if you’d seen us in pre-season, I saw us heading in the right direction in terms of that. I think it’s a bad day in the office but we have got to be constantly working on that and that is the direction we are going in – we’re working really hard on our skills and we’ve got to work even harder.
“It’s a little bit of the story of the week before. You’ve got guys so passionate about playing for this club and everything like that. I just think we made quite a few mistakes around the contact area, whether it was stripped, whether it was on the floor, so it’s not just out-and-out handling errors.”
Delight for Bristol
Bristol director of rugby Pat Lam was delighted with the brilliant win from his side and praised the character his players showed in their performance.
“It was the first one for us as a group since I arrived but the first win here in the league for the club for 22 years. It was a massive marker for us and certainly a monkey off our back. To go back-to-back having beaten them last year at home as well is good,” he said.
“It certainly wasn’t the prettiest game, but at the end of the day five points were on offer and we took four today and we deprived them of points too, so I am really pleased.
“Our defence and the character of the boys was outstanding, they just worked their way through the adversity.
“They [the two wins] haven’t been the free-flowing game we would like, they only made 80 tackles and we made 220 tackles and that is some serious character to do that because you can see they have got some serious threats.”
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