Once a Wasp, always a Wasp.The proud boast of successive generations of successful Wasps was bound to become a double-edged sword as soon as the Lions coaching panel was named, with the club's current director of rugby and head coach, Ian McGeechan and Sean Edwards, joining forces with Warren Gatland, the club's former director of rugby, and Robert Howley, the club's former backs coach.

And the critics were given more ammunition when the Lions squad was announced on Tuesday.

Even though the club is languishing in the bottom half of the Premiership after under-performing all season, four Wasps found their way into the 37 man party.

Although that is four times as many as any other English club – even Leicester, who despite reaching the Heineken Cup semi-finals and leading the Premiership, are only represented by scrum-half Harry Ellis – it is hard to quibble too violently with McGeechan's selections.

Riki Flutey has emerged from his first season of international rugby as an inside centre of increasing authority and, like whole-hearted World Cup winning prop Phil Vickery, was widely expected to make the cut.

Neither Joe Worsley nor Simon Shaw made my final 35 – revealed in this column last week – but they possess the physical presence and the experience to stand up to the physical onslaught that the South Africans are bound to deliver.

It doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to cast them as midweek warriors.

They will be taking the hits, keeping up morale, maintaining standards on and off the field and pushing the likely Test Lions all the way.

That line of thinking also accounts for the presence of Alan Quinlan, the back-row hard-nut from Munster who couldn't get into Ireland's Grand Slam-winning team this season, Adam Jones, the four-square Welsh prop and Nathan Hines, the Scottish lock.

None of those will take a step backward in the face of the expected relentless intimidation from the South Africans.

Of the other players who didn't appear in my prospective squad – and I award myself a B+ for getting 25 names right – Bath hooker Lee Mears, Harlequins winger Ugo Monye and Cardiff No 8 Andy Powell have been picked because of their pace, a priceless commodity on the hard grounds of the high veldt and Leinster wing Luke Fitzgerald has been picked for his footballing intelligence, while scrum-half Tomas O'Leary and centre Keith Earls have clinched their places on the back of Munster's imperious Heineken Cup form. The same can be said of the choice of captain.

Paul O'Connell – although he had an indifferent tour with Sir Clive Woodward's 2005 Lions – has been magnificent for Munster. Even though he crossed verbal swords with Gatland at the time of the Grand Slam match with Wales, and even though his Ireland captain Brian O'Driscoll led the last Lions party, O'Connell conformed most closely to McGeechan's oft-quoted predilection for a forward as captain.

McGeechan famously explained his inspired and unexpected choice of Martin Johnson as Lions captain to South Africa in 1997 by claiming that when it came to tossing the coin for choice of ends before the match, he wanted the South Africans to have someone to look up to.

O'Connell will fit that bill. And it won't have escaped notice that the only two Lions captains to have won series in South Africa, Willie John McBride and Martin Johnson, were also locks.

If there is a single "bolter" in the party, it is Earls.

Named as one of five centres by McGeechan, his two stunning tries in the Heineken Cup quarter-final against the Ospreys could hardly have been better timed.

His inclusion takes the Ireland tally up to 14 – the most they have ever managed, even in the bloated 45-man 2005 Lions party – and the Munster representation up to eight, although the province's continued involvement in the Heineken Cup – with Leinster, Cardiff and Leicester also involved, over half the tour party have some high-octane rugby to survive – will leave McGeechan and Co in no doubt about their charges' match hardness.

By the same token, there is little margin for error.

The Heineken cup final is at Murrayfield on May 23. The Lions leave for South Africa the next day, with their first match – against a Royal XV at Rustenburg – just six days later.

Given the attritional nature of modern professional rugby, it is highly unlikely that the 37 players named this week will make the plane to Johannesburg, while the chances of the Lions reaching the end of their six-week tour – the third Test of which is in Johannesburg on July 4 – without calling for replacements are those of a snowball in hell.