This is London Irish's centenary season. Yet even a gala ball, a reception at the Irish Embassy and an encounter with the Barbarians pencilled in before Christmas cannot mask a certain - how to put this tactfully - foreign flavour to the traditional stew. If an unfamiliar player bursts up-field at Gloucester on Saturday he is more likely to be from Cape Town or Christchurch than Limerick or Cork.
London Irish have always extended a welcoming hand to visitors. This time, though, the turnover of playing personnel has been extreme. Under Dick Best only seven of the 34-man squad of 12 months ago are still around.
When it emerged that the IRFU had contracted upwards of 100 players - offering national and provincial contracts of between £30,000 and £100,000 - to shore up their domestic game, Best was straight on the phone to the southern hemisphere. The upshot is that the former All Black out-half Stephen Bachop and the Natal-based scrum-half Kevin Putt illuminate a 14-strong list of new arrivals recently swelled by the Bristol prop Kris Fullman.
Best points out that the club still have seven amateur sides and "countless" junior teams drawn from youngsters of Irish extraction. Even so, the English director of rugby is serious when he describes this as "arguably the most important season in London Irish's distinguished history".
At risk is both the raison d'etre of the club and their heart and soul. Best has already unveiled Vision 2000, a mission statement for the club which instructs all concerned to aim for a top-four place in 1999-2000.
While the local council delays plans to increase capacity from the current 7,000 - "Our breakeven figure is 8,000-10,000," admits the club's chairman Geoff Read - 'Irish are looking at all sorts of options, including playing a couple of "home" matches in Ireland or at Highbury, hoping to attract the sizeable expatriate community in north London.
"We've a very big fan base in Ireland and we would like to give people over there the opportunity, without being patronising, to see what English first-division club standard is now," says Read.
In his view, London Irish's priority is to ensure they still have options to keep open. They have been among the clubs approached regarding both ground-share and merger possibilities, which is why the new season is so crucial.
"What we need to do is successfully establish our business here, build stable foundations and get the management on board to make the thing hum," says Read.
The off-field team has been boosted by the arrival of a new chief executive, Geoff Huckstep, who previously performed the same role at Wasps, and the former Harlequins coach Andy Keast, reunited with Best, his old mate. Keast seeks mid-table respectability: "We're not at the level of the Baths and Newcastles at present but we have single-minded determination to give it a bloody good go and get really close to them, if not beat them." In the vanguard will be the international lock Malcolm O'Kelly, wanted by Castres and Bath over the summer. If he is lamenting a missed financial opportunity, it does not show. "I really had to do a lot of thinking and that took time," he said, dismissing talk of a contractual dispute as "just a bit of messing".
With Bachop and Putt unavailable for the first two months and the imposing number eight Isaac Feaunati not expected to regain full fitness until December, O'Kelly will have every chance to be the "big cog" he wants to be.
Logic might suggest that his cosmopolitan new team-mates, again led by Conor O'Shea, will take time to settle. But when has logic ever been allocated a parking-space at Sunbury?
