Peter Jackson: The Welsh cavalry ride to rescue of Wasps

When Stephen Jones turned down an offer to join Leicester in 2004, Wasps had just superseded the Tigers as champions of England and Europe.
Eight years later, after two seasons in France and six more back in Scarletville, the most-capped Welshman prepares to take a belated plunge into the murky waters of the English Premiership with Wasps. How times change and how the mighty fall.
Wasps spent most of last season performing a plausible impression of a team heading for the rocks and a club on skid row.  They avoided relegation by a single point, no mean feat by David Young as director of rugby keeping them afloat despite a boardroom crisis which raised questions about the old club's very existence.
For Jones, therefore, it promises to be a baptism of fire and not simply because completion of the take-over headed by ex-Wasp Ken Moss and his consortium is running behind schedule. Nothing can be taken for granted and Moss has already made it clear that Wasps cannot survive on the breadline support of last season.
They can never have needed a Pied Piper as badly as they need him now.   Gates at Adams Park slumped by almost 50 per cent to fewer than 7,000.  After a fraught first season in charge, Young has turned his squad inside out with more than 30 going and coming.  The new Wasps will be built around a strong Welsh connection.
It includes ex-Sale centre Lee Thomas, former Wales hooker T Rhys Thomas from Cardiff Blues, apprentice prop Will Taylor from the Ospreys and Jones, competing for the No.10 position with another Welsh stand-off, Nicky Robinson, who arrived at Wasps via Gloucester and the Blues.
Jones, at the zenith of his career with the Lions in South Africa three years ago, may be some way below that but Young believes he has enough left to be more than a one-season wonder.  Wasps have signed Jones on a two-year contract which will take him almost halfway into his 37th year.  The way Young plans it he will not replace Robinson but compete with him in the belief that winning the English Premiership requires more than one high- class operator to call the shots at No.10.
“My reputation is at stake and I'm certainly not going to surround myself with players who can't do the job,” Young says.  “I'm not turning the club into a fifth Welsh region but there's no question that the players we have signed will do a really good job for Wasps.
“There is no number one at ten.   Stephen can put a little pressure on Nicky and give us huge experience on and off the field. Everyone has been impressed by his enthusiasm. He's still top quality and will have a big influence on how we play but you need two quality tens. Players like Stephen have been through the highs and the lows. They know how to win games, how to steer the team in the right direction.
“Nicky carried a massive burden on his own last season in that he had to play every match.  You never want to over-play anyone but, because of the dire straits we were in, he had to carry a few bumps into some of the games.”
There is no clause in Jones' contract requiring him to turn his back on the possibility, however remote, of Wales needing him should Rhys Priestland, James Hook and Dan Biggar all go down simultaneously.  Wales may have put him out to graze but Jones is still available, having spurned the soft option of announcing his Test retirement. That would have made him a more attractive property to Wasps, guaranteeing his presence throughout the season.  “I would never take that international availability away from a player,” Young says. “If Wales need Stephen, I'd drive him down to Cardiff myself.  Stephen probably believes those days are behind him but if the call came we'd support it wholeheartedly.”
Jones brings his new club a wealth of experience which can be measured in more than 4,000 points, a total matched only among his contemporaries by Ronan O'Gara and Jonny Wilkinson. The new Wasp scored the majority of his in 316 matches for Llanelli and the Scarlets, the remainder for Wales and Clermont Auvergne.
Wasps begin their pre-season schedule in Italy against Treviso this coming Friday night before opening their Aviva Premiership campaign against champions Harlequins at Twickenham on September 1.  As a designated home fixture, Wasps ought to start by quadrupling last season's average gate.
For the time being, they will be only too happy to find the stability to keep going.    The long-term goal, to build a new stadium in London and return to the capital which they left for High Wycombe after sharing Loftus Road with Queen's Park Rangers, will take some doing.
Unless more customers roll up to Adams Park at the end of an industrial estate, there will be no Wasps, a point readily conceded by Moss and his consortium.
As for the take-over, there has been no up-date on the club's website to an item posted three weeks ago expressing hope that ‘completion on the deal is expected by the end of the month'.
“It is taking longer than expected but I don't think there's a problem,” Young says.  “I'm cracking on with getting ready for the season.”
If by the end of it Wasps are back up where they once belonged, their Welsh missionaries will have done a spectacular job…