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“My first game, back in the amateur days, was against London Irish so it’s funny the way fate can deal you these hands,” he said.His parting words to his clubmates focused on their future rather than his past. The hooker David Paice, an Australian with residential qualifications, is a candidate, and he should be accompanied by the Tottenham-born winger Topsy Ojo and pacy full-back Delon Armitage. And based on all that, I don’t see why he shouldn’t go on tour this summer to Australia.”Smith would be disappointed if a clutch of his younger players did not make that trip. There are a lot of ifs and buts, but forget about Catty’s age. Catty has just put two 25-match seasons together back-to-back and who’s to say he can’t put in another.”If Brian Ashton goes in there with Andy Robinson and they [England] play Brian Ashton’s attack philosophy, there is one bloke on this planet who knows that philosophy better than anyone else, and that is Mike Catt.”So it wouldn’t surprise me if Andy Robinson went that way with the World Cup. In contrast, this defeat meant an end to Saracens’ season.
The contrast between what lies in wait for Catt and Bracken could not be more distinct.

Catt, the Exiles’ centre, is carrying on for another season but Bracken is retiring after a distinguished career.According to Brian Smith, Irish’s director of rugby, Catt is in good enough form to resurrect his England interests.”They say ‘Catty is fantastic, but…’, and what they mean is, ‘but he is 34′,” Smith said “Well, that doesn’t matter. The Exiles still have two games, at least, to play – a Premiership semi-final play-off next weekend at Leicester, where Irish last lost an away match in all competitions at the end of November, followed by the European Challenge Cup final against Gloucester at The Twickenham Stoop the following Sunday. This match was as much a tale of two 34-year-olds, Mike Catt and Kyran Bracken, as it was about London Irish claiming their highest finish in the Premiership. Wasps: Tries Worsley 2, Van Gisbergen, Sackey; Conversions Van Gisbergen 4; Penalties Van Gisbergen 3.Gloucester: O Morgan; J Simpson-Daniel, M Tindall (J Bailey, 40), A Allen, M Foster; R Lamb (L Mercier, 72), P Richards (H Thomas, 40); P Collazo (T Sigley, 76), M Davies (O Azam, 72), J Forster, J Pendlebury (A Eustace, 72), A Brown, P Buxton (capt), A Hazell, J Forrester (L Narraway, 65).Wasps: M van Gisbergen; P Sackey, J Lewsey, S Abbott (F Waters, 76), T Voyce; J Staunton, E Reddan (J Honeyben, 80); T Payne, J Ward, P Bracken (J Va’a, 76), S Shaw, R Birkett, D Leo, J Worsley, L Dallaglio (capt).Referee: A Spreadbury (Somerset).Play-offs* SEMI-FINALS Sunday 14 MaySale v Wasps(Edgeley Park, 13.30 )Leicester v London Irish (Welford Road, 16.00)* FINAL Saturday 27 May(Twickenham, 15.00). Gloucester took a couple against the head on Saturday and Forster, their generously-proportioned tight-head prop, lasted the full 80 and grew in stature (metaphorically rather than literally, thank the Lord) in the second half, which is no mean achievement for a mere 19-year-old.The Londoners picked on him from first minute to last – a punch here, a patronising tap on the head there, a nasty word in his ear somewhere else – yet failed to subdue him.

If they cannot deal with a young pup at scrum time, what price their chances of dominating the fighting dogs awaiting them up north?Gloucester: Tries Allen 2, Lamb, Bailey; Conversions Lamb 3; Penalties Lamb 2. If it goes on like this, we’ll need 40,000-seater stadiums to cope with the demand. Who’d watch football when they can see rugby as it’s being played at the moment?”While Wasps are still involved in a tournament, they expect to win it. To put one over Sale at Edgeley Park, however, they will need a 100 per cent improvement at the line-out and a considerable degree of sharpening at the scrum. There again, everyone in the Premiership has been scoring heavily in recent weeks.

Dallaglio, some captain when it comes to summoning the furies away from home, delivered his most productive spell of the season as the contest reached its climax, and with the likes of Worsley, Josh Lewsey and the hard-working hooker Joe Ward taking control, there was an air of inevitability about the conclusion.”We need to sort ourselves before we go to Sale for the semi-final,”admitted Wasps’ head coach, Shaun Edwards, who in conjunction with Ian McGeechan has precisely six days in which to concoct a strategy to derail the most aggressive and consistent side in the country.”We’ve conceded nine tries to London Irish, now four to Gloucester It isn’t good. We needed to play in the right areas, and we weren’t finding them. Sometimes, you have to play smart and play sensible.”A failure of nerve on Ryan’s part, or a necessary clipping of the wings in the face of the kind of response common to champion teams – especially three-time champion teams, like Wasps? Ryan slept easy in his bed on Saturday night, entirely comfortable with his decision. He had already seen his infants overdose on their own enthusiasm in the first half – “Our game management was appalling; we kept trying to score from our own 22 and gave Wasps high field position every time,” he barked – and was fearful of something similar occurring at the last.As it turned out, Mercier and his fellow old-stagers, Adam Eustace and Olivier Azam, could not prevent the Londoners claiming the one available place in the Premiership play-offs with a try by Joe Worsley two minutes from the end of normal time.

“But there was still plenty of time for Wasps to do what they do best, which is build pressure in the late stages of a game. “We were points up, and yes, we’d done some brilliant things in that third quarter,” the coach said. Gloucester had absorbed wave upon wave of brutal assaults from a Wasps pack ogreish by comparison with the home side’s forward unit. When the Londoners coughed up possession, Lamb might have cleared his lines with the boot. Instead, he cleared them with a combination of brain and technique. Simpson-Daniel’s playful circumnavigation of a thoroughly discombobulated Lawrence Dallaglio was the icing on the cake.Yet Ryan withdrew Lamb from the fray when push really came to shove, replacing him with Ludovic Mercier.