This time round we actually get play a Welsh team, the Scarlets. In fact it was these two teams who contested the very first Anglo-Welsh Cup final back in April 2006, a match of unforgettable dullness, the first half of which was elongated by two lengthy injury stoppages, followed by a second half marked only by the steady tedium of both the rain and the on-pitch action. It was surprising to look up the records and find that the game was actually played in the spring – in the memory it has taken on the black and white hues of a mid-winter match, cold and wet and grinding and miserable.

This time round, of course, we are playing in mid-winter, so Sod's Law suggests we should be in for an all-action, fast running, caution-to-the-wind spectacular. Well, maybe that's a bit fanciful...but perhaps not an altogether unlikely event. Against Racing Metro 92 in the last round of Amlin Challenge Cup pool matches last week, Wasps seemed keen to run the ball from practically anywhere. There were more breaks (and attempted breaks) from the twenty-two in eighty minutes against the Parisians than we'd witnessed in the rest of the season combined. Admittedly Wasps had already qualified for the quarter-finals, but all the same, perhaps there was a sign in this game of a change in approach. Combined with recent attempts to bring more of an off-loading element to the forwards' game, maybe what we are seeing is an evolution in Wasps' playing style, a move away from the safety-first game that has characterised (and perhaps blighted) not just Wasps, but many other clubs, since the double-whammy introduction of ELVs and breakdown protocols last season.

On the subject of the latter, it seems to this layman that the last month or two has seen referees subtly altering their priorities at the breakdown. While we still (rightly) see a good few penalties given for the attacking team refusing to release the ball at tackle and ruck time, it appears that the officials are now being a lot more stringent with those defending players who are competing for the ball. Unless you are properly on your feet, supporting your own weight, rather than half-kneeling on the nearest prone body or propped up on your hands rather than actually going for the ball, you won't be given the penalty. In this way, insisting that the defenders are complying with the law, the advantage at the breakdown has been nudged back in the attacking team's favour. And this week I read that in the upcoming Super 14 series the referees are going to be equally strict with the tackler. He will, as now, be allowed to get up and play the ball immediately at the tackle situation, but he must do so without interfering with the player he has tackled. No more leaning on the tacklee's body as you get to your feet, no more subtly holding on and obstructing his placement of the ball while you manoeuvre into position – now you must move clear and then get up. And only then will you be allowed to play the ball. All of which should (hopefully) make retaining the ball in attack a bit easier, and therefore a bit more attractive as an alternative to hoofing the thing up field and waiting for the return shot.

But enough of the cod theory and analysis. Attacking rugby hasn't been entirely impossible this last year and a half, as the likes of Northampton and London Irish have shown. London Irish, of course, played Scarlets in their Heineken Cup group, and against all the expectations of rugby followers on this side of Offa's Dyke, were beaten at their own game twice. Far from shutting the Exiles down and starving them of points, as a defence-minded team in England might have done, the West-Walians simply out-attacked the men from Reading. In their last encounter two weeks ago, the Scarlets went from 10-22 down to 31-22 in the space of seventeen minutes. It was exhilarating stuff, and eventually snuffed out Irish's Heineken Cup campaign. It would be surprising, given its success against one English team, if the Scarlets don't attempt a similarly expansive game against Wasps on Saturday. Perhaps we'll get that rip-roarer after all.

The Scarlets are, to all intents and purposes, Llanelli. When regional rugby was introduced to Wales in 2003, they and Cardiff were the two clubs who effectively formed regions by themselves, though with a nod to regionalism in the adoption of new names. Originally Llanelli Scarlets, they were formally re-branded as simply The Scarlets in 2008. In their previous guise as a club rather than a region, they were the kings of Welsh cup rugby, winning the domestic cup no fewer than thirteen times between 1973 and 2005. Those of us who spent time in Wales in the late eighties and early nineties couldn't but be aware of the contrast between Llanelli and the likes of Neath. Llanelli, in their dashing scarlet kit, were renowned as an attacking team back then as well, not consistent enough to make a great annual impression on the league but capable of hitting heights that no other team could live with. In the other corner stood Neath, clad head to toe in black, winning league titles but winning ugly. The most exciting topic of conversation after a Neath match was usually how long a kick Paul Thorburn had managed to hoof across the clinging mud of the Gnoll.

Having said all this, it remains true that Llanelli's most famous victory, more famous than any of those cup wins or the few league titles, was in a friendly, a match with a scoreline that doesn't immediately make you think of slick backs moves and incisive running. The date: October 31 1972. The score: 9-3 (one goal and one penalty to one penalty). The opponents: the All Blacks. JJ Williams, Ray Gravell, Phil Bennett, Derek Quinnell, Tom David, and twenty-six thousand other people inside Stradey Park. What an experience it must have been...

So, there we have it: one team who look as though they are trying to develop a more expansive game-plan against another team who don't know of any other. I wouldn't want to tempt fate or anything, but we could be in for an entertaining match, couldn't we? If the 2006 cup final turned a spring day into a cold winter grind, is it too much to ask that Saturday might see a bleak mid-winter evening give way to a spring-like re-birth of attack minded rugby? We live in hope.

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