Dave Walder: Wasps' spending on superstar names had caught up with them

Wasps' "brutal" demise is down to the club stretching "beyond their means" by paying their "superstars", the Newcastle Falcons head coach Dave Walder has suggested. The former Wasps fly-half spent four years at the troubled club before their doomed move to Coventry in 2014, and recalled playing his old employers in a Premiership Cup match at the Ricoh Arena in front of just 250 people - a sign, he thought, that the writing may have been on the wall. But considering Kurtley Beale, Elliot Daly, Jimmy Gopperth, Danny Cipriani, Christian Wade, George Smith, Willie Le Roux and Charles Piatau have all played for Wasps since their relocation, it's easy to see how the wage bill might’ve piled up. Walder, who cut his teeth at No 10 at Coventry-based Keresley RFC, added: “As a group have been talking from the move to Coventry, about the pressures they’ll be under and making things work, and I think there's always been that ‘we'll be alright, we'll be alright’ mindset.