AS STEVE HAYES tells it, things happen because of people. The road to ownership of Wycombe Wanderers began with his friend Terry Evans, who spent part of his career at Adams Park, and his buying of Wasps started, not that surprisingly, with an evening in Lawrence Dallaglio’s company. Even less surprisingly, the evening stretched long into the night and the small sum that Hayes had paid at a charity auction for enjoying Dallaglio’s company over dinner would end up costing him a small fortune.

They became friends and the more Hayes saw, the more he liked. “I met Lawrence at that dinner in 2001 and in 2002, I agreed to chair his testimonial committee. That was great fun but what I always remember about Lawrence was a phone call to him a couple of days before England’s World Cup semi- final against France in 2003.

“Business commitments stopped me going down to Sydney for the semi-final but I had booked flights and a hotel for the final. Then I got worried about England not being in the final and rang Lawrence. ‘I’m hoping you guys win so I get to the final’, I said to him. ‘Steve’, he said, ‘there’s no need to hope. We are going to beat the French, there’s absolutely no doubt about that. You will be here for the final, mate’.

“I watched that French game on television, saw Lawrence sing the national anthem in floods of tears and knew there was no way France could win.”

Hayes, who had been a football fan from the day he learnt to think, was lured into expanding his sporting interests. Encouraged by Dallaglio, he invested in Wasps and last year bought out Chris Wright and John O’Connell to become the club’s owner. Three and a half months ago, he completed his takeover of League One football club Wycombe Wanderers and now divides his time between his football and rugby union clubs. “When it comes to watching, rugby is more fun, because it is my second game and I’m not as tense as I am when watching the football team. But I’ve always been a sports lover and my desire to see Wasps do well is as strong as it is for Wycombe.”

Hayes came from northwest London, the son of parents who worked as a motorcycle shop manager and a forklift driver. It was his mum who drove the forklift and she was good at it. Steve wasn’t good at school and the only test he passed was his driving test at the fourth attempt. His ambition was to be wealthy and he ditched school as soon as he could. He first worked in a bakery, then for a butcher and at the age of 17 had his own meat round. His first break came at the age of 19 when he got a job selling double-glazing door to door. “We first had to undergo a week’s training in Golders Green, obviously no pay, and had to report for training at 7am. I went the night before to check out where this place was and it took me a half an hour to find it, no name over the door, no number on it, you had to be sharp to find it. Next morning most of the candidates got there around 7.30 and were told to go home.

“A guy called Larry Brooks was our teacher and I’m still applying the lessons he taught us. ‘Selling’, he would say, ‘is about numbers. You go to a bus stop, you see 100 girls and you politely ask each one in turn for a kiss, eventually one of them will say yes’. It’s the law of numbers. The course finished on Friday afternoon and that evening I had my first ‘sit’.

“The company had a family who were interested in double glazing and I was sent to make the pitch. It took three hours but I loved it and when they signed the contract I got the most unbelievable adrenalin buzz. My cut was 11% but it was 17% if I knocked on doors and came up with my own clients and that’s how I worked from then on.”

Though he imagined it was the pursuit of wealth, it was something else, perhaps the desire to show his parents he could achieve without an academic training. “I did things ‘respectable’ people are not supposed to do. I sold double-glazing, I was a moneylender, a debt collector, set up a loans company and, maybe worst of all, I bought a football club.

“But I did things properly. The council houses where I collected money, small amounts, I’m still welcome there. People who imagine me turning up with a baseball bat, it was never like that.”

Eventually Hayes teamed up with the father-and-son team, David Cowham senior and junior, to set up loans.co.uk, which became the country’s leading finance broker and was ranked 10th in The Sunday Times list of the 100 best companies to work for. In 2005 the company was sold to MBNA Europe for £100m and, at 44, Hayes was a wealthy man.

The challenge now is to turn two loss-making sporting entities, Wasps and Wycombe, into profitable operations. “As things stand, with Adams Park our home ground, we can’t do that, but we’ve been in discussions for a long time with Wycombe council and hope to get approval to build a 20,000-capacity stadium in the area on a site that will allow us to make it far more than a football-rugby stadium.

“I hope we will get the go-ahead from Wycombe council before the end of the year, certainly within the next six months. Ideally, we would have the stadium open by the start of the 2013-14 season.” In the short term, Hayes believes Wasps will remain competitive, even if he makes no secret of the fact that the club cannot pay as much in wages as many of their rivals. “We have suffered because we’ve had so many England players. We want to go on having England internationals in our squad but we don’t want to go on suffering for that. Wasps are not getting a fair slice of the money the RFU pays to Premier League Rugby to compensate us for their use of our England players. I know other clubs disagree, but that is very unfair.”

Hayes tells a story of Wasps offering flanker Tom Rees a £20,000 increase on his annual salary and then realising their budget didn’t stretch to it. “I explained we couldn’t afford it. He went away, spoke to people, came back and said he would still like to stay. We are talking about a future England captain and with characters like him, Wasps will continue to compete at the top end of European rugby.”