Leeds Carnegie have been waiting for this day throughout their Guinness Premiership existence, you could say.

Never mind that the West Yorkshire club secured their first Premiership win of the season at Adams Park yesterday, they had not beaten London Wasps in 12 attempts since their rise from the lower reaches of the English game, so No 13 has acquired a lucky feeling.

Their position in the table is unaffected — they remain two points behind Bath in the basement — but the significance of the occasion escaped no one. Gradually, Leeds are coming to believe that they belong in the upper echelon and success against a club who started the season well and have dominated English and European rugby in recent years means more to them than most.

“We’re realising now how big a step it is moving up a division,” Marco Wentzel, the Leeds captain, said. “It has taken a lot of time, mentally, for players to make that change, so to get that win was awesome.”

It confirms, too, the belief that a week earlier they could have beaten Saracens at Vicarage Road and might have done but for a disallowed try for which the match referee later admitted he was in error.

Given their yo-yo existence, it is four years since Leeds last won away in a Premiership match, against Bath in 2005, and just short of a year since Wasps last lost at home, to Sale Sharks. How could a club of such pedigree, their supporters will ask, go from a bonus-point win over Gloucester at Kingsholm to so lifeless a display in the space of eight days? On a day, too, when Wasps officially confirmed their intention of playing a fixture in honour of St George’s Day at Twickenham for the next three years.

Their ambition is to attract 80,000 to Twickenham when they play Bath on April 24, the day after St George’s Day, a leap of faith from the 7,000 at a wet High Wycombe yesterday. But on a pitch sodden by heavy morning rain, they were second-best by a distance to the tactical direction of Andy Gomarsall (who numbers Wasps among his former clubs) and the workrate of a Leeds side once criticised by Neil Back and Andy Key, the head coach and director of rugby respectively, for their lack of fitness.

“It wasn’t pretty rugby but we gutted it out,” Key said. “We’ve never stopped believing that this team can be part of this competition and today we have proved just that.”

The executioner was Ceiron Thomas, who kicked five penalty goals to David Walder’s three and missed only one kick at goal, but he and all his colleagues hustled and bustled Wasps to such an extent that such experienced players as Joe Worsley disappeared.

Wasps’ day could be summed up by a sequence of play just before the interval when Joe Simpson broke from his own 22 and David Lemi was pulled down in the Leeds 22 and won a penalty. Wasps went for the close-range lineout, lost the throw and although they still forced a scrum, were turned over. Even when Leeds conceded a free kick, Steve Kefu’s pass was intercepted and the visiting team cleared the danger.

Wasps may have one of the best lineouts in the Premiership, but it took a battering from Erik Lund and Co. Even when Simon Shaw made his first appearance of the season, it could not be depended upon. With the last throw of the dice, Wasps forced a lineout six metres from the Leeds line, but Lund deflected the throw away from Shaw and Rhys Oakley gathered possession; a penalty made all safe and Leeds jubilant.

Scorers: London Wasps: Penalty goals: Walder 3 (19min, 25, 60). Leeds Carnegie: Penalty goals: Thomas 5 (2, 22, 28, 33, 68).

Scoring sequence (London Wasps first): 0-3, 3-3, 3-6, 6-6, 6-9, 6-12 (half-time), 9-12, 9-15.

London Wasps: M van Gisbergen (rep: T Varndell, 68); P Sackey, L Mitchell, S Kefu (rep: E Hickey, 68), D Lemi; D Walder, J Simpson; G Bocca (rep: C Beech, 68), J Ward, B Broster, G Skivington, R Birkett, J Worsley, S Betsen, D Leo (rep:S Shaw, 50).

Leeds Carnegie: L Hinton; L Blackett, J Hepworth, S Barrow, R Welding; C Thomas, A Gomarsall (rep: S Mathie, 55); G Hardy (rep: T McGee, 68), V Ma’asi (rep: P Nilsen, 55), J Gomez (rep: P Swainston, 55), E Lund, M Wentzel, K Myall (rep: C Clark, 77), H Fourie, A To’oala (rep: R Oakley, 41).

Referee: M Fox.

Attendance: 7,616.