In this age of the sporting specialist, Gordon Ross has been a rare but welcome exception.

You'll probably remember him as the tidy fly-half who won 25 Scotland caps - and should have won more - between 2001 and 2006, but having been a trialist with Hearts, a schoolboy international golfer (Justin Rose was one of his opponents), a talented cricketer and an area tennis champion, he could probably have made his career in any one of five sports.

Having decided to become a professional egg-chaser, however, Ross went on to become one of rugby's great troubadours, his peripatetic journey taking him from Heriot's to Edinburgh to Leeds to Castres to Saracens and then to London Welsh, for whom he still turns out on an occasional basis at the age of 36. Loyalty might not be the most obvious quality to shine out of his cv but having joined his current employers in 2009 he is virtually a stalwart of the club.

Would that they had a few more in a season that is turning into one of the most gruesome in rugby history. The Aviva Premiership season has barely passed its mid-point, but they are already 20 points adrift. Mathematically, they have a chance of survival. Realistically, they are toast.

The question on many lips is whether London Welsh are the worst team ever to play in the top flight of English rugby. That dubious distinction is currently held by Rotherham, who lost all 22 of their games in season 2003-04, but even they managed to gather three bonus points, which is two more than London Welsh have collected so far.

The plight of London Welsh has provoked an outbreak of hand-wringing amongst the English rugby commentariat. I suspect there is a demographic subtext to this, as many of the hand-wringers are of an age to remember the club's glory days of the 1970s, when Old Deer Park was graced by such superstars of the sport as Gerald Davies, John Dawes, Mervyn Davies and JPR Williams. Nostalgia or not, it is a desperate state of affairs to see them in their current state.

But thoroughly predictable with it. If you want to know where things have gone wrong for London Welsh then look no further than the Wikipedia page that records the comings and goings of Aviva Premiership players last summer. While most clubs were happy to bring in nine or 10 new faces - a good number of them from their own academies - London Welsh recruited a staggering total of 26, drawn from eight different countries. Never has their 'Exiles' tag been more deserved.

In fairness, even London Welsh probably surprised themselves in getting to the Premiership in the first place. Last season, they trailed Bristol in the second-tier English Championship by some distance, but somehow managed to get the better of Andy Robinson's side over the course of the two-leg play-off final. Champagne all round - followed by the hangover of trying to put together a side that could compete at the higher level.

Which, frankly, is not the kind of thing you want to be doing at the last minute. As John Taylor, another of their past greats, said the other day, players who are still looking for a club in June are on the market for a reason. They did manage to sign one stellar figure in the (portly) shape of All Blacks scrum-half Piri Weepu - who has since migrated to the fly-half position - but there was a cobbled-together look to their squad. Nowadays, it is more of a falling-apart look.

Would a multi-million pound budget have helped? Probably, but it would only have plugged some gaps and it would have been a temporary arrangement. For if London Welsh have proved anything over the past few months it is that one of the oldest truisms in rugby still applies: that good teams are evolved and grown, not bought in an end-of-season sale.

Even Toulon, twice champions of Europe and with the deepest pockets in world rugby, took time to develop. Mourad Boudjellal, their flamboyant and eye-watering wealthy owner, had been throwing cash at them for five seasons before they finally rewarded him with silverware.

Yet London Welsh can hardly be blamed for their predicament. The way English rugby is set up at the moment has almost institutionalised the Peter Principle - it allows sides to rise to their level of incompetence. London Welsh and Worcester have become yo-yo clubs bouncing between the top two divisions, good enough to scrape through the play-off lottery but too weak to survive at the top.

The irony is that this system of promotion and relegation has been hailed as proof of the competitiveness of English rugby. In reality, having one guaranteed whipping boy in the Premiership has insulated most other clubs from the danger of the drop. Last week, London Welsh chairman Bleddyn Phillips accused the Premiership clubs of operating as a closed shop. It is hard to argue with his point of view.