DAI Young has lavished praise on his Wasps players for scaling all the obstacles to earn a home quarter-final in the Amlin Challenge Cup.

The black and golds booked a last-eight tie with Biarritz over Easter with a bonus-point 36-13 victory over Bordeaux on Sunday, He said: "I'm really pleased for the players. The win was the most important thing obviously, just to get to the quarter-finals, but to get there with a home draw is massive for us.

"It's a big achievement for the players because I don't think we've played with anything that's recognised as our best team on paper in this competition. We had Joe Burton playing in the second row last week, Jack Wallace was on the wing and he's a full back, Dom [Waldouck] was pretty much injured...so to get through it and get a home draw is a big achievement for the squad."

It wasn't straightforward though.

Returning from Bayonne with nothing could have derailed their campaign, but ten points from the last two games was an unequivocal statement that there is still plenty of life left in this team.

Young said: "With our last two performances, we've shown a lot of character. Things are far from perfect on the field, as we all know, but we've scored two bonus point wins that looked unlikely with ten minutes to go.

"One thing that I've tried to instil into the team was character. Yes, you can work on things, but it's very difficult to build character. But this team have shown that in abundance in the last two games - especially when things were stacked against us in the last ten minutes.

"We found a way to get those bonus points and what it gives us is something to really look forward to in the latter part of the season."

Wasps' win came about the hard way. They were behind to an early intercept try and needed a moment of quality from Elliot Daly to get them going before further tries from Matt Everard and Tom Lindsay coupled with a penalty try earned them the maximum.

Young said: "I was twitching a bit after two minutes and I've probably aged 30 years this season. It couldn't have been a worse start for us and we never really had that gap between us.

"You're looking for a ten-point gap before you can start thinking about bonus points and it took us a real long time to get that.

"But it typified our season. We produced opportunities, got into their 22 and that last pass wasn't quite good enough. But that comes with a little bit of belief so hopefully two bonus point victories can give us that confidence."