Financial turmoil and discontent at Wasps, pull the other one – Andy Goode

If you believe a certain newspaper this week, Wasps are in “financial turmoil” and there could be an “exodus” of their leading stars but nothing could be further from the truth.

The article in question suggests Elliot Daly and Joe Launchbury are expected to leave when their contracts expire. It’s obviously any player’s prerogative to move elsewhere at the end of their deal but they have both signed new contracts this season and neither are unhappy from what I hear.

As many as 10 of the senior squad have agreed new terms since September and Dan Robson signed a new contract as recently as this week, so there certainly isn’t a groundswell of discontent among the players.

Players don’t re-sign contracts if there are the kind of big issues at a club that are being suggested so it’s sensationalist and lazy journalism.

It smacks of a player at Wasps who hasn’t been offered a new deal and is leaving at the end of the season and has said things to a journalist that don’t represent the views of everyone else at the club.

I guarantee if you’re not getting paid and there’s huge discontent about the training facilities, you’re not performing the way Wasps are right now on the pitch. They’ve only lost to Sale and Leicester, both on the road, since January and look like sealing a spot in the semi-finals.

It isn’t just the results either, you can see how much these guys love playing together in the way they celebrate.

Dai Young has created the culture under the ownership of Derek Richardson and you can see from the outside that it’s a good environment to be in, let alone when you’re a bit closer to the action as I am with the work that I do for the club.

There have been unforeseen delays with the training ground that aren’t ideal because they had a site earmarked and there were issues with the full planning consent for what they wanted to do but new locations have been found and I understand that’s very close to being signed off.

As a player, you want to get in there as soon as possible because it’ll be amazing and that will happen but sometimes reality dictates that it takes longer than you anticipate with planning constraints and red tape but a deal for another site is close to coming to fruition as Dai has indicated.

And, it isn’t as if Wasps are currently training somewhere that is well below the standard of other Premiership clubs. Most clubs don’t have the state of the art facilities that Wasps will benefit from when they move from Broadstreet RFC and the results on the pitch would indicate that the current setup is more than workable.

Saracens have been back-to-back European champions and their training ground isn’t that great, so stories suggesting players are going to leave based on the training ground are absolute codswallop. Quins have got a very nice training ground at Surrey Sports Park as well but I don’t think the Wasps players would swap places with them at the moment.

Image rights were also raised as an area of concern and only the individual players can tell you about their payments but it isn’t a straightforward process to calculate them and invoice for them and backlogs do happen at clubs, so it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened if there have been any delays.

The club is moving in a great direction and when players like Brad Shields and Lima Sopoaga are coming in and Kurtley Beale and others have been there recently, you know there just aren’t the major issues there that have been suggested.

Wasps are a team that has improved year on year and are one of the big dogs in the Premiership now when it wasn’t so long ago that they were really struggling. That is all because of significant investment.

I don’t think anyone can accuse the club of a lack of investment when you look at the squad and who’s arriving next season as well. If you compare the squad in 2015 when I was there to where it is now, it’s night and day.

The likes of Juan de Jongh, Willie le Roux, Jimmy Gopperth, Elliot Daly and the list goes on are all world class players.

You ask any player if they’d rather have a shiny new training ground with an average squad or wait a couple of years and have a group of players that is littered with international stars and be competing at the top end of the Premiership and they will definitely choose the latter.

You’d rather play with Sopoaga and have an average training ground than play with Andy Goode and have an amazing training ground, that’s for sure.

As for financial turmoil, I don’t think so. The rugby is only a small part of the business at Wasps nowadays and it’s an important part but the hotel and the casino and everything else that goes with it are providing very healthy incomes for the club.

By the time the summer’s here and I’m sat on a beach with a beer in my hand, the accounts will have been published, more information will be available regarding the training ground and the article in question will look a bit daft then. Who knows…Wasps might even be Premiership champions as well!