Rugby Union / Ralph Ellis / 29 August 2008 / Leave a comment

Wasps insist they will be unaffected by the absence of their former talisman this season. Ralph Ellis disagrees.

There's an old saying that no player is ever bigger than the club. It's true, but there are still some stars whose stamp runs so deep into the fabric that it's never quite the same when they go. The massive void Alan Shearer left at Newcastle has never been filled and I remember Martin O'Neill telling me that after Henrik Larsson left Celtic, the club's big European nights just didn't have quite the same feel to them.

Switch sports, and there's a warning for Wasps fans that they will be heading into new, uncharted territory at the beginning of this season. For the first time in 18 years they will not have the powerhouse, inspirational presence of Lawrence Dallaglio on the pitch this season. And however much they might try to insist it won't affect them, the truth is it must do.

Last season's Guinness Premiership Grand Final winners bring the trophy back home tonight for a friendly with Llanelli as their last warm up game before the League action starts for real next weekend. And the good news is they will have Paul Sackey back in their ranks after recovering form his knee injury. The bad is there's no Dallaglio, won't ever be, ever again, and there's no obvious sign of who might fill the gap.

Young England star James Haskell, who will take Dallaglio's role in the scrum, was at the 02 Scrum on the Beach event yesterday trying to talk positively. "I don't feel any pressure at all," he claimed. Sorry, don't believe him.

Former France captain Raphael Ibanez will lead a team that won three Premiership titles and two Heineken Cups in the last five years. It's a bit like being the man who gets asked to follow Sir Alex Ferguson.

And he's not being helped by his fellow countryman Philipe Saint-Andre, coach of rivals Sale, who reckons Ibanez just won't be able to step into the shoes of the former England captain. "Lawrence's attitude set the tone at Wasps," he tells this morning's Daily Mirror. "In my view he was the single biggest presence in the league last season. What they did to come back so strongly, from last to first, was incredible. So losing him will be a big thing in Wasps' changing room."

Despite all those warning signs, Wasps are still [3.8] favourites to repeat last season's Grand Final success and [4.5] to be the regular season winners of the Premiership. Both look great opportunities to lay because sheer sporting logic tells you it will take at least a season for the club to recover from the retirement of their greatest player. In a division where every other club is spending more and recruiting more ambitiously, it will be just too big a void to fill.

At the moment either Leicester [4.3] or Gloucester [4.0] look safer bets for the regular season, and I wouldn't rule out last year's beaten semi-finalists Bath as a longshot [9.0] for the Grand Final this time

Five things you might not know about Lawrence Dallaglio

1. With an Italian father and half Irish mother, his full name is Lorenzo Bruno Nero Dallaglio

2. The bruising tough guy started out as a choirboy - and sang backing vocals as part of the King's House School choir on Tina Turner's hit 'We don't need another hero'

3. He turned down an invitation to play for England, before first coming to notice as part of the England team that won the inaugural World Cup Sevens in 1993

4. He was the only player to appear in every minute of England's 2003 World Cup winning campaign

5. He is part owner of a racehorse called Regime which has won more than £200,000 in prize money