Guiness Premiership / Ralph Ellis / 13 May 2009 / Leave a comment

Despite tipping trouble for Wasps way back in August, Ralph Ellis takes no pleasure from Ian MGeechan's departure and voices his concern that pressure on rugby managers will soon rival that faced by their round-ball counterparts.

The managerial merry-go-round is spinning. Steve Coppell became the latest to get off in the middle of last night after Reading, for so long favourites for promotion, failed to make it to the play-off finals.

We're more than used to that situation in football, but the fairground's newest destination is in Rugby Union. The growing demands to compete financially with France, and the collective losses of each of the Guinness Premiership teams, is beginning to make owners of the top clubs just as itchy as football chairmen have always been.

That's why Ian McGeechan will today be saying hasty goodbyes to his players at London Wasps after losing his job as director of rugby following four years in charge. It was always going to be a tough season for them after Lawrence Dallaglio hung up his boots. (Did you follow my tip in August to lay them when they were Guinness Premiership favourites?) Having a boss who also had one eye on preparing a British Lions trip was only adding to the problems. Just to make the situation even more difficult their full-time head coach Shaun Edwards was also part-time defence coach for Wales.

Wasps have been a club in turmoil ever since new owner Steve Hayes took charge in the middle of the season and brought in Dallaglio to his new board with responsibility for 'player recruitment and talent identification'. If that didn't make clear that McGeechan was no longer trusted for the most essential parts of the role as director of rugby, then what would?

Now it emerges this morning that Wasps made approaches to Gloucester to see about recruiting Dean Ryan. Their owner Tom Walkinshaw has told the Daily Mail's Peter Jackson that approaches were made "as early as January or February". Walkinshaw, himself currently conducting a review to decide whether to keep Ryan at Kingsholm, says: "They asked for permission to talk to Dean. They said: 'Is that okay with you?'. I said, 'No', that he was under contract. It didn't surprise me that they were planning changes because their coaching team were quite frequently unavailable for games because they were watching players for the Lions or with Wales."

Where will this all leave 62-year-old McGeechan before the Lions leave for their 10 match tour of South Africa in less than a fortnight's time? Well, hopefully it will help him focus on that job and prove a point to Wasps that they will be missing a man of massive experience.

South Africa are now [1.45] favourites to win the series and while I still can't decide about laying that, the [2.76] to lay for a 3-0 Springboks whitewash is definitely good value.

Five things you might not know about Tom Walkinshaw

1. Born in Mauldslie in East Lothia, Scotland in 1946, his dad was a market gardener and he left school to join the family business

2. He made friends with a local garage owner who raced Minis, and started driving. He moved to England to enter Formula Ford races, but his first big chance with the March team was cancelled after he broke both legs in an accident

3. As well as driving, he established Tom Walkinshaw Racing as a business in 1976 to prepare other sports cars, and that made his fortune.

4. The firm went bust when Tom's Arrows Grand Prix team failed owing them 30million dollars. Wilkinshaw rebuilt his empire thanks to money from the Australian division of TWR.

5. He has an Oxford degree - but it's an honorary Doctor of Engineering awarded by Oxford Brookes University in 1998.