It is less than a month since the Premiership Rugby Limited chief executive, Simon Massie-Taylor, spoke of the doomsday scenario that loomed over club rugby given the widespread financial turmoil. Wasps’ suspension on Wednesday after the admission they are likely to go into administration brings PRL face-to-face with that very scenario and the prospect of finishing the league with 11 teams. What’s worse is that come May there could even be fewer.
Rewind the clock further and it was seven years ago Wasps were being proclaimed as the richest club in the world after the bond scheme that has played such a big part in their undoing. Precisely how they now find themselves set to follow in the path of Worcester will be determined by the independent inquiry, which must surely be set up to examine the failings of domestic club rugby in England. That does not make the blow any more palatable, however, for one of the country’s most successful clubs.
