Leap Year put curse on Wasps as we won

MARK WOODROW THE FORMER PERTEMPS BEES, BRISTOL, DONCASTER, VIADANA AND DINGS CRUSADERS FLY-HALF

- Jon Newcombe

WHEN Pertemps Bees beat Wasps in the 2004 Powergen Cup, it was just one of those days when everything came off for me. I kicked six penalties from six in the 28-24 win, and I was convinced that the drop-goal from halfway that Paul Honiss wrongly disallowed went over, even if Mark van Gisbergen protested that it didn’t.

The match was played on February 29 and the funny thing was our prop, Kevin Tkachuk, said in the hotel before the game that it was a superstitious day, with it being a leap year, and that Wasps would be in for some bad luck!

Tim Watts, the Pertemps owner, had as big a smile as anyone when the final whistle went because he put something like 100 quid on us to win at odds of around 800/1!

I think it was just a case of everyone buying into what we set out to achieve and hanging in there and giving that extra ten per cent. A good example of that was when Baxo (Nick Baxter) chased all the way back to stop Mark Denney two metres from the line. Everyone wants to knock the top team off, and in Wasps’ defence, they had that every week because they had won everything, it was just lucky for us on that day that it came to pass.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t back it up against Newcastle in the semi. I remember going on a tour to Australia and speaking to Noony (Jamie Noon) and Tom May about the match and they said they had seen how Wasps had been caught a bit unawares and were determined the same wasn’t going to happen to them. They crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i’ to make sure they weren’t embarrassed.