Bucharest Wolves start their European Rugby Challenge Cup campaign in Newcastle, but the primary aim of this scratch squad and their Welsh coach is to improve the national team

Lynn Howells whistles through his lips as he remembers his first day coaching Romania’s rugby players. “There was a metre and a half of snow on the pitch in Bucharest,” he says. “And it was absolutely freezing! I tell you now, in Britain no player would have cleared that snow. But they just got on with it and trained as normal. I thought to myself: ‘This is a good bunch of lads. I can do something here.’”

Two and a half years later, Howells’ initial confidence has been reinforced by results. The Romanian national team won the 2012 and 2013 IRB Nations Cup and have qualified for next year’s Rugby World Cup, and the Bucharest Wolves – whom he also coaches and who start their European Rugby Challenge Cup campaign in Newcastle on Friday – were good enough to beat the Italian side Calvisano twice last season and run the Falcons and Brive close.

“We were in front against Newcastle until the last kick of the game,” says Howells, who was Graham Henry’s assistant at Wales and has been a wandering minstrel ever since. “And we were also within three points of Brive. So you can see the progress we have made. When you start something and see it develop it’s exciting.”

But Howells is a doughty realist. As he points out, the Wolves are a scratch squad, chosen from the eight professional sides in Romania’s domestic league. Their wages – roughly £200 a month – are tiny. And the task in this year’s Challenge Cup is far harder as there are no Italian teams in their group, just three thoroughbreds: Stade Français, Newport Gwent Dragons and Newcastle.

“You have to remember too that the Wolves are a development side,” Howells says. “Our team is all Romania‑based players and the primary aim is to identify players to improve the national team.”

So far, so good: five Romanians play Top 14 rugby in France and the full-back Catalin Fercu has signed for Saracens. Even so, shooting for the knockout stages is not so much a stretch as “an impossibility”, Howells says. Yet if the Bucharest winter strikes hard and early they may yet sink their teeth into a famous scalp.

“But the international team is a different story,” he interjects. “We’ve recently beaten Tonga and Canada and I think we’ll surprise a few people at the World Cup. Our big goal is to win two games, which would mean automatic qualification for the 2019 competition – that would be huge for Romania.”

It won’t be easy: Romania start against France, then play Ireland before facing Canada and Italy. Howells is particularly looking forward to returning to Wembley for Romania’s game against Ireland – his first visit since 1999, when a late Scott Gibbs try ripped the grand slam from England’s grasp.

“I remember Clive Woodward arrived before us and pinched the home dressing room, which should have been ours,” he said with a chuckle. “That didn’t go down well with Graham Henry. And then in the tunnel Woodward went to the guy by the cup and said: ‘You can put the white ribbons on that now.’ It was unbelievable.”

Has Woodward apologised for such arrogance? “Of course not – but he doesn’t have to,” he says. “My memory of that game was that we shouldn’t have been in it but we were given the opportunity and we took it.”

The World Cup gives the emerging nations, teams such as Romania and Georgia, a place at the top table every four years but Howells says it is not enough. Though he praises the IRB for helping smaller nations, he says the gap between the haves and the rest will never inch closer when the tier-one countries award themselves most of the cash sloshing around the game.

One of Howells’ solutions is to have promotion and relegation from the Six Nations. “There is already a Six Nations B and it would only be good for the game to have a yearly play-off between the worst team in the Six Nations and the winners of the B competition,” he says. “We played in Georgia last year and we had a crowd of 62,000, so you can’t tell me there isn’t the demand.

“You can understand why the likes of Scotland and Italy don’t want anything to do with it as they get a huge amount of money from the IRB but the fact is they are not playing well. And, on a given day if everything went our way, we could beat them.”

Meanwhile, those people who have bought tickets to see Romania at the Rugby World Cup – what should they expect? “The level of the top players is good,” Howells says. “The difficulty is that our best players are all forwards. The backs have some way to go, to be honest.

“People have to appreciate that we are going to grind our way to tries. We are not going to be New Zealand or Australia.”