Deano rues the one that got away
Speaking afterwards, Richards said: “When you look at the opportunities we created, and should have nailed, it’s incredibly frustrating.
“We can sit here and criticise certain decisions from the officials but at the end of the day it was our own fault we lost, because we had the chances and didn’t take them.
“It’s definitely one that got away.
“Wasps got three lots of points in the first half purely down to us not being able to implement our exit strategy, which is a simple thing to do and doesn’t take much doing.
“Our accuracy in certain aspects of play just wasn’t there today, and it cost us dear. It’s a real shame – everyone in that changing room is absolutely gutted, and rightly so because it was within our own power to win that game.”
Scoring two tries through Johnny Williams and one from Mark Wilson in a game which certainly got the pulse racing, Richards was more concerned with the multitude of scoring opportunities which weren’t taken on the night.
“You could hardly count the number of chances we had, there were so many of them, but we just couldn’t finish,” he said.
“That five or six minutes of play after the 80 minutes had elapsed was quite extraordinary, and we gave it a go.
“You can criticise the referee for maybe not giving an offside against Wasps, but it’s a big call and they’re only human. Yeah, it’s frustrating, but it was our own fault we lost the game.
“You think to yourself ‘how can we get it so wrong in terms of our accuracy?’
“We’ll look at ourselves over the next few days, put it to bed and by Tuesday we’ll be looking forward to the Sale game next weekend.”
