Wasps boss Dai Young was a satisfied figure after his team ended their recent win drought with style against Harlequins.

Young spent plenty of time on the back foot after his injury-hit side suffered five consecutive defeats, and was clearly relieved and delighted that the run is now over.

“I’m really pleased with the effort and commitment,” he said. “We were a bit careless on occasion, but the effort and commitment was outstanding.

“We talked about stepping up and showing what the jersey meant and showing what it meant to play at the Ricoh and I thought they did today to a man.

“Unusually for us, I thought the defence won it. In the last two games we’ve had the effort and the commitment but not quite got over the line.

“I don’t think we’ve been far away from it, but our defence was excellent today and we were clinical when we had the opportunities.”

Wasps opened the scoring with a training ground lineout manoeuvre which Young was pleased to see produce results, although he admitted areas for improvement remain.

“Sometimes they come off and sometimes they don’t and for most of the season they haven’t, so it was nice to get a try from one,” he said.

Josh Bassett scores his side's fourth try during the European Rugby Champions Cup match between Wasps and Harlequins

“We’d worked on a few things and on changing things up, because as I’ve said before I thought we’d started to look a bit predictable.

“We were far more gain-line oriented that perhaps we’ve been in the past, and had big carries from our forwards to give us that penetration.

“Being honest and picking holes, I thought we kicked a little bit too much but I think you can understand that on the back of four or five bad results.

“We were a little bit careless on occasions, and there certainly was a little bit of edginess, a little bit of lack of confidence, but you could see that oozing back once we’d scored a couple of tries.

“So it wasn’t a perfect performance, but defence ticked the box. Attack was a big step up, but we realise we need a bit more improvement and hopefully that will come on the back of a win scoring five tries.

“We had a few opportunities at the end when we made breaks and hopefully later in the season, when we’ve put some more big performances in, we’ll keep the ball in hand and play rather than kicking it behind them.

“But I don’t want to knock too many holes in the players. I’m really pleased to get that win, we needed it and we got a good performance to go with it.”

Tim Visser is tackled by Dan Robson during the European Rugby Champions Cup match between Wasps and Harlequins

The result also keeps Wasps’ qualification hopes alive, as Young acknowledged.

“If we had lost today, we’d have had to do something pretty special in the last four games and probably relied on somebody else as well,” he said.

“It’s given us a chance now, and the two games against La Rochelle are going to be huge.

“I’d like to think we can build on today’s performance and get better. We’ve got a while before we play them and hopefully we can go into that game with confidence on the back of some better performances, some wins and hopefully somewhere near a full-strength squad because that’s what it’s going to take.”