In fine form on the pitch and rude health off it - the English club have come a long way since nearly going bust, says the Mirror rugby correspondent
It is not only the imminent Rio Olympics which makes 2012, the year of the London Games, seem like a distant memory.
That was the year Wasps dodged the relegation bullet on the final day of the season, crashing at home to bottom club Newcastle and only avoiding the drop by a single point.
The same Wasps who last weekend went to Saracens and smashed the English champions 64-23 – the most points ever conceded at home by Sarries and only the Premiership leaders’ second defeat of the season.
Four years ago was also when Wasps, struggling to attract a crowd to Adams Park – the stadium they shared with Wycombe Wanderers in an industrial estate at the far end of a no-through road – came within three minutes of going bust.
The same Wasps who are now on course to become one of the world’s richer clubs having bought the Ricoh Arena, relocated to Coventry and been the first sports club to launch a retail bond listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Go back to 2012 and annual losses of £3m made Wasps the paupers of the Premiership, so skint that team boss Dai Young was paying for medical tape out of his own pocket.
Star players were leaving, not joining.
It appeared to reach the point of no return one afternoon in December when a club which could boast two European Cups and four Premiership titles were on the point of being wound-up by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Three minutes later and that would have been that.
But a six-figure cheque cleared just in the nick of time, new owner Derek Richardson agreed to absorb £10m worth of debt and the rest is the stuff of dreams.
There was opposition to Wasps, a club with its roots in north-west London, announcing that it was leaving Wycombe – where it had been tenants for 12 years – to make a new home in the West Midlands in 2014.
An article written in the Guardian by 25-year Wasps fan Paul Dornan stated why he would “absolutely not” be following them to Coventry because “rugby is about comradeship and respect but Wasps have shown absolutely no respect to their supporters”.
He bemoaned that his beloved club were “basically telling the fans who have stood by them all these years that they don’t count anymore” and that “Wasps have now decided to dump the girl they came with and dance with someone else from the Midlands”.
There were many who shared his way of thinking, who felt equally jilted.
Yet the new relationship has proved to be a marriage made in heaven, at least on the balance sheet.
Whereas in the Adams Park days Wasps received only 15p of every £1 taken and were the second lowest revenue-generating club in the Premiership, now they keep the lot and rank highest in Europe.
And instead of seeing their best players leave in search of richer pickings elsewhere, they are keeping the cream of the crop and adding global stars.
George Smith and Charles Piutau this season, Danny Cipriani next.
Wasps have already booked a home European Cup quarter-final and currently lie fourth in the league ahead of Saturday’s trip to Bath, a club whose on-field fortunes are headed in the opposite directions.
Then next week they contribute two of their best players to England’s Six Nations effort, with Joe Launchbury and James Haskell lining up against Ireland.
Wasps’ travails might seem a long time ago, but you have to go back even further for the last time that England had anything to smile about.
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