AT CHRISTMAS, Wasps were all but down and out, 10th in the Premiership and 16 points behind leaders Gloucester. Today they face Gloucester in High Wycombe just six points behind with a game in hand. As that game in hand is against demoralised Newcastle, and Leeds the final match of the regular season, victory today would almost certainly send Wasps into the playoffs as the top seeds.

Gloucester represent the final obstacle to an astonishing comeback that has redefined the Wasps team of championship-winning years. They have won their last eight Premiership matches, averaging 33 points a game. They have smashed their way to 36 from a possible 40 match points as their attack has rampaged out of opposition control.

This winning streak has scarred every one of the top half of the Premiership teams except for Gloucester. Indeed, the last team to beat Wasps in the league were the Cherry and Whites in an 18-17 thriller in the West Country. A convincing revenge today would be the defining statement to date of the domestic season, the indelible stamp of authority running into the playoffs. Gloucester have conjured some magical moments this season without convincing they had mastered the trick of becoming champions. The way Munster assaulted them in the quarter-final of the Heineken Cup proved they are far from the finished article.

Everything will have to come off for Ryan Lamb, Gloucester’s chief magus, this afternoon. Gloucester will have to rack up points because Wasps cannot stop scoring tries. This year’s model is similar to recent Wasps vintages only in its steely determination to keep winning. The hallmark of the three-time champion Wasps team was the aggression of a defence that utilised turnover at contact to deadly counter-attacking effect.

This side has made its first-phase attacking game a much greater priority. The midfield distribution is precise and the finishing has an air of finality to it. Danny Cipriani is maturing at a rate that would be unbelievable in all bar the most outrageously gifted. On a bad day he is playing with assured certainty, on a good one, such as the last match against Saracens, he is brilliant. His development is the fundamental reason behind the flood of points Wasps are scoring.

The other main reason is Paul Sackey. His Six Nations form built on the foundations laid in the early part of his international career, but it has been during this unstoppable Wasps surge that he has emerged as the complete wing, a metamorphosis from good geezer to wonderful winger. Speed, strength, footwork and that Wasps will-to-win have merged to make him not only a dazzling finisher but a regular creator of tries for others.

This pair have unleashed torrents of attacking play, and youngsters such as Dominic Waldouck, until 2008 very much the talking horse of his club, are riding the wave with such glee that suddenly the world is his limit. He may still be rated behind Riki Flutey and England’s most underestimated rugby brain Fraser Waters, but he could yet slip onto the plane to New Zealand, such is the form into which he is running. If Waters eclipses Mike Tindall he may sneak another couple of caps this summer along with Josh Lewsey, whose consistent belligerence makes him a certainty to travel to the southern hemisphere.

Gloucester will have to magic a defensive line of Tindalls if they are to halt Wasps in their offensive tracks, but for all the vibrancy in attack there are concerns that should be echoing around the training ground of Shaun Edwards’ swaggering troops. The flip side to the concentrated attack and the flowering of the fly-half as Wasps’ central figure has been a marked degeneration in the quality of their defensive system.

Cipriani often defends at outside-centre hidden from the hard-running back rows, but both Sale and Saracens cracked this defensive ploy with ease. Lamb has the passing skills and vision to ask a few questions of the Wasps defence and if answers are not forthcoming, Gloucester have the capacity to rack up a substantial tally to act as a bulwark against the waves of Wasps offence. During the eight-game winning procession, opponents have averaged 23 points against Wasps. Twenty-four points a match is an awful lot to keep scoring. If Wasps are to dispel any lingering hope for their rivals they need to lower that average.

Here the presence of the greatest Wasp of them all, one Lawrence Dallaglio, must come into its own. Presuming Wasps make the final, if Dallaglio plays every game between now and the end of the season he has only five matches left before his colossal career ends.

Dallaglio’s iron will has forged this machine. Loved at Wasps, loathed in Gloucester, his unpopularity is testimony to a man who has relished bowing to nobody. Cipriani and his glorious, gambolling friends behind the scrum may be the future of Wasps, but the great eight is not quite yet the past, and the man who dug the foundations for this club will grab his spade one more time. It seems inevitable that Twickenham, with Wasps, will be his final, finest hour.