SO much was expected from this rugby season with it being World Cup year but it has spectacularly failed to deliver.

A Welsh team challenging for the Heineken Cup? Not a chance. A Welsh side bidding for Magners League silverware? Barely.

So much for the regional situation.

How about at national level when it was so important to achieve something going into the World Cup? No better. In fact probably worse.

The autumn series when it was important to make a few waves against southern hemisphere opposition? Not one victory, not even against Fiji who held Wales to a draw.

What about the Six Nations then and the last chance saloon competitively speaking ahead of the World Cup rather than the phoney war of the summer? No better there either.

In with a shout of winning the Grand Slam or the Triple Crown, maybe making a real challenge for the Six Nations title? Forget it.

For the third successive season Wales ended up in fourth position, three victories and two defeats and one of those wins, against Ireland, owing everything to an incorrect decision about the ball in play leading to a try by Mike Phillips which should not have been given.

And on the individual front Welsh rugby has grabbed the headlines for all the wrong reasons – on and off the field.

On it, the most notable feature has been the exodus of leading players. First there was Gavin Henson, though many will say that’s a good thing, then it was James Hook, then Lee Byrne, all departing for the riches of France and Phillips is set to follow suit after basically being shown the door by the Ospreys.

They, along with other previous big spenders Cardiff Blues, are cutting back with recruitment down to a minimum in the case of the Ospreys and none at all with the Blues.

And off the pitch one player after another has earned publicity of the unwanted kind by getting into trouble – Henson, Andy Powell, Bradley Davies and Phillips all ending up on the wrong side of the law, and I’m not talking about the rugby handbook here.

And more collectively, not one Welsh team managed to reach even the knock-out stages of the Heineken Cup which is a pretty demoralising statistic.

Domestically, when there was a chance of two teams making the Magners League playoffs just one managed it, and that in the most embarrassing of ways.

They may take it – though a draw against Munster in Limerick this weekend isn’t the best outcome – but the Ospreys positively hurtled into the play-offs by slaughtering Aironi, the worst team in the league, 12-10.

They should have crept back into Wales after a result like that and though they may have reached the play-offs after winning the title last year it’s hardly a cause for celebration after a year of turmoil on and off the pitch.

Oddly enough, the teams who could fare much better next season are those who have received the least investment in recent times, the Scarlets and the Dragons.

At one stage in a gripping final night of the league season the Scarlets had come from nowhere to be in a play-off position until a late James Hook penalty swung it the Ospreys’ way in Italy.

But the Scarlets have nevertheless played an attractive brand of rugby, they are committed to discovering and developing home grown talent and a number are being brought through already.

It’s a similar story with the Dragons. Needs must maybe, but they continue to live within their means – a lesson on a far wider front than just rugby – and they are starting to reap the rewards.

Cracking wins over the Ospreys and the Blues in the final month of the season set Rodney Parade alight which, coupled with all the improvements being made to the ground with a new stand and hospitality suite and boxes, could make it the place to be.

But one word of caution. The support has been growing, the atmosphere is ratcheting up and it is the only real rugby ground left among the leading teams in Wales.

But there is a group of supporters who, being kind, are a bit too exuberant, or more realistically are becoming downright abusive.

They number around a hundred and they are situated in the enclosure under the Hazell stand on the dressing room side of the halfway line – they taunt the opposition and while in the case of the Ospreys the banter is part and parcel of the occasion, foul-mouthed insults are most definitely not acceptable.

Chants from the football terraces insulting the referee are not only to be abhorred, they will turn officials against the team and make the very people the Dragons are trying to attract in greater numbers think twice about joining the party.

That apart, though, it’s going to be a very active summer for them on the recruitment front, with a newish coaching team making big strides in their preparations for a new campaign and the new facilities completed in time for what promises to be a really exciting season.