FORZA FUTURA!

By Vespasian
November 23 2011

Hugo Southwell's hat-trick sealed a comfortable win over Femi-CZ VEA Rovigo 38-7 in the Amlin Challenge Cup on Sunday. Zak Taulafo and Richard Haughton also scored in another bonus point win that restored Wasps at the top of the pool. But are the portents good for another successful European campaign 9 years after the first?

The mist descending around the ground may be a better pointer if the club's future isn't resolved this season. However, the parallels with 2002/3 are tantalisingly compelling. London Wasps won our first European crown in the Parker Pen Challenge Cup run of 2002-03. The club was buoyant after a move of venue from Loftus Road in west London to Adams Park in High Wycombe. Warren Gatland had assumed the role of Director of Rugby upon Nigel Melville's departure. And it was a World Cup year, albeit before rather than afterwards.

On second thoughts, perhaps we'd better hide the tantalus from view. The argument that it was Wycombe that provided the impetus for Wasps successes during the past decade is beginning to wear thin. The crowds are down. Wasps also won silverware during the Loftus Road years, winning the league in 1996/7 immediately upon moving into Shepherd's Bush, together with two Tetley's Bitter Cups but a few years later.

The truth is, it was sound foundations laid through smart management, and a team built around Lawrence Dallaglio's inimitable leadership that proved Wasps' endeavours, not the club's location. We shall return to the foundations shortly. They were laid well before Lawrence Dallaglio had joined the club...

For the time being the questions for this season remain unanswered thus far.

The managerial change looks right. David Young is moulding a more consistent team and the results are gradually coming together.

Our occasional lapses against Sale, Newcastle, Exeter, and Northampton are worrying and too frequent, however. Silverware, this season at least, may not necessarily follow.

The leadership on the field is not always apparent, especially against the aforementioned clubs.

And the biggest item on the agenda of all, whither Wasps?

That is the question!