When the keys were handed over for Sixways Stadium, the place had been abandoned for so long that the doors would barely open.
Old boots were decaying beside the training pitch and three years’ worth of dust had accumulated on laptops left in the analysis suite.
‘It was like a scene out of Pompeii,’ says Worcester Warriors new CEO, Stephen Vaughan, who was one of the first to step inside. ‘It was like everyone had just upped and left.
‘I walked into the medical area and there were half-opened packets of plasters. GPS units that had just been left there. Used coffee cups, strapping, underpants… you name it.
‘The staff had no licence to do anything because the club had been under administration. There were papers on the table in Steve Diamond’s old office. Weeds were growing over the fences, boilers weren’t working.
Sixways closed its doors three years ago when Worcester Warriors went bust and were booted out of the Premiership
The club saw 151 years of history brought to a shuddering halt as they were wiped off the map
‘You knew the place needed a lot of love but, my God, you could see the potential straight away.’
The rugby department at Sixways Stadium was locked up in 2022, when this proud institution was declared bankrupt, kicked out of the Premiership and mercilessly wiped off the map. Dozens of players were left without jobs as the club’s 151-year existence came to a shuddering halt.
Following a £2million takeover deal, Vaughan’s job was to bring the place back to life. He sat in an abandoned office room at the start of the year, pen and pad in hand, and began to map out a plan.
The key step came in April, when it was announced Worcester would be brought back into the Championship, as part of an expanded 14-team second tier.
‘From years of working in elite sport, I’ve learnt that most business models are flawed,’ explains Vaughan. ‘When there’s one source of funds to keep things going, as soon as there’s investor fatigue or the banks take a bath then you’re in trouble.
‘There’s a big plot of land at Sixways and we’ve got some amazing plans for padel courts, convention centres and electric vehicle charging hubs, because we’re 30 seconds off the motorway.
‘Rugby clubs have got to cut their cloth and live within their means and we will be funding the rugby department on a manageable level.
‘I had some loose commercial guesstimates of income streams but the first thing I needed to do was bring in a head coach. We had so many applicants – well-known, not well-known, local, overseas – but I turned my phone off to all of that.
Worcester players meet with their fans following their home win over Newcastle in September 2022 – the final match before the club was suspended from all competitions
Worcester’s players were all made redundant and their fans heartbroken by the loss of their club
‘We’re not going to be signing guys like Maro Itoje and Finn Russell in the Championship. We’re not going to be signing players on a king’s ransom.
‘We wanted a coach who knew how to transition players. A coach who would be able to take the kid who had gone to Harlequins, not quite made it and needed an arm around the shoulder.’
Vaughan had watched the likes of Jack Willis and Thibaud Flament – who this summer were both selected in the team of the year for France’s Top 14, the toughest domestic league in the Northern Hemisphere – come through the Wasps academy under the guise of Matt Everard.
So he called Everard, 34, to invite him for a meeting at Sixways. The project was still tied up in confidentiality agreements so he offered little detail on what the meeting would be about.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Everard, as he arrived at the stadium a few days later.
‘I’ve bought the club,’ revealed Chris Holland, the new owner.
‘Yeah, we’re bringing rugby back here to Worcester,’ added Vaughan. ‘We want you to build a team of players and management from scratch.’
Matt Everard has signed up as head coach – and was given the unenviable task of building a team and management staff from scratch
The brand new Worcester Warriors squad on an away day ahead of their first pre-season friendly on Saturday at Ampthill
There was no time to waste. Everard signed a contract and immediately moved into his new office, where he fast-tracked his plan to build a squad to compete in the upcoming Championship campaign.
‘On day one, it was me and Stephen on the recruitment,’ explains Everard. ‘We brought in three analysts and I said to them, “Let’s give ourselves 10 days to get a list of every out-of-contract player”. We spoke to Premiership coaches, URC coaches, Top 14 coaches, agents.
‘There was a white board on the wall of our office and we covered it with all these magnetic tags with players’ names. By the end of it, all four walls were covered with these tags.
‘We got to 650 names and I said, “Lads, we need to stop here”. We went through the players, watched their footage, and then I met with around 100 players.’
The next challenge was finding players who would take the leap of faith. Rugby’s financial landscape has been a minefield in recent years; a world of bouncing cheques and broken promises. Players could, naturally, treat such plans with scepticism.
‘Josh Bassett was the first one to sign,’ reveals Everard, who convinced the free-scoring winger to join from Leicester Tigers.
‘He’s a Premiership player, a great bloke, a brilliant professional. I know him personally. We’ve played together, I’ve coached him at Wasps and Leicester, and he’s got three little boys at school in Birmingham. That was the big one. That was a flag in the ground for us.
‘This hasn’t happened before. Do you remember any teams that have started from scratch? That’s what we’re doing, it’s a unique and special story.
Josh Bassett, formerly of Wasps and Leicester, was the first player to sign up
Everard has a Premiership infrastructure in place at what is now a Championship club
‘Worcester has an unbelievable fanbase, the facilities are top-end Premiership standards and the stadium’s amazing.
‘We’ve spoken about how we want the fans to feel. We want them to get excited about the way we play and be proud of our effort. The whole city are a part of the story. As soon as you walk around the place and talk about what we want to create, it excites people.’
One by one, players signed up. Billy Twelvetrees, Matt Kvesic and Tom Seabrook all added valuable Premiership experience, with the first two having represented England. Prop Livai Natave of Fiji, Welsh scrum-half Lloyd Williams and Uruguay full-back Juan Gonzalez make it a rare second-tier squad with five internationals. They will join a core of younger talent with a point to prove.
The squad has been pulled together at short notice. Most players have moved into the city and set up a new home. Beside the stadium there are also half a dozen luxury shipping containers that have been converted into festival-style accommodation; free to use as an overnight base for players with families based further afield.
Gathering as strangers for pre-season training, the first challenge was creating cohesion and a shared identity.
‘Before the first day of pre-season, we sent out a fitness testing schedule to the guys. We gathered the lads in the changing room, everyone was looking a bit nervous and I said, “This is the testing program for the day, your GPS units are in your cupboard above your seats”.
‘They reached into get them and every cupboard had a bottle of beer in it. Gotcha. Straight away, they relaxed. I told the players and staff that we want this to be the most enjoyable club experience they will have.
‘Instead of training, we had a barbeque and played some daft games like beer pong and catch the egg. Come Joussain, our big second row, had full egg to the face.
Billy Twelvetrees, who won 22 caps for England from 2013 to 2015, has been brought in
Uruguay full-back Juan Gonzalez adds more international experience to the squad
‘Each game we did, the prize was to pick your seat in the changing room. Everything was starting from scratch so we needed a bit of team bonding to break the ice.
‘One of our challenges is going to be cohesion but it’s not just going to happen. It’s not about me standing in front of them with a few buzzwords, it has to be organic.
‘We went hiking and camped in the Malvern Hills. A few of the lads didn’t bring tents and had to sleep in their cars. One of the guys broke into their cars while they were fast asleep and moved them all around Ledbury, so they got a bit of a shock when they woke up.
‘We had some competitions and the losing team had to do a catwalk. Fraser Balmain was wearing a dress from a charity shop!
‘Honestly, I’ve not known a group that has spent so much time together away from rugby. We want to build a home for people to come in and express their best selves, to get tight and care about each other.’
The bulk of the recruitment is now complete and Everard is ‘very happy’ with his squad as they look to unseat Ealing, champions of the second tier for three of the last four seasons but denied promotion as their ground is too small. Worcester, of course, would have no such problems at 12,000-seat Sixways.
A couple of players remain on trial here and another significant announcement is expected in the coming days; a winger who was once earmarked for one of Eddie Jones’s England squads.
‘We won’t be spending as much as Ealing spend on their team but we hope the opportunity and the experience we’ve got will help us punch above our weight,’ explains Vaughan.
Ealing will be Worcester’s main rivals for the Championship title – having won it three of the last four years but been denied promotion due to their ground being too small for the top flight
Worcester’s Sixways holds 12,000 – and they have already sold 5,000 season tickets for their first season back
‘We thought we might sell 1,500 season tickets and we’ve sold nearly 5,000. We’ve got no annual hospitality left. The demand has been amazing and that all feeds back.’
Everard adds: ‘This area’s a hotbed. There are some great schools and some great clubs in the area. We need to relaunch our academy at some point, hopefully before the end of the first season.
‘The priority has been getting the men’s team up and going first, then the academy and the ladies’ team. I’ve seen how emotional some of the fans have been about the club coming back.
‘We speak about trying to run a Premiership program, from the way we operate to the standard of training. We’re blessed with the facilities, very grateful to have them. The way we behave, the intensity we train at, the way we recover, the way we coach.’
Leading me on a tour the training facilities, Everard points out expensive shock therapy and anti-gravity equipment that was left untouched.
He stops by the fish tank in the forwards’ meeting room. ‘This is their goldfish. One of Tom Cruse’s coaching messages to the forwards is when you make a mistake, don’t worry about it and get onto the next thing. AKA the memory of a goldfish. That was his first meeting and the next day he turned up with a tank and a few goldfish!’
It is a narrative borrowed from the Ted Lasso series but soon the Warriors will be writing their own storylines. A unique tale of a club rising from the ashes. First up, a pre-season fixture at division rivals Ampthill on Saturday, before the gates to Sixways re-open at last on September 19, when Worcester host Bath.
The club have invited 45 ex-players to provide the team with a guard of honour, in a fixture that could also see the likes of Ted Hill and Ollie Lawrence return in their new club colours.
Ted Hill came through the Worcester academy and joined Bath in 2022 when his boyhood club went bust
Ollie Lawrence did the same as Hill, and the pair will return to Sixways for its grand reopening in a pre-season friendly on September 19
Worcester’s players enjoy a dip in pre-season – but there’s no sinking feeling this time around
‘We’ve sold over 7,000 tickets already and we’re hopeful it will be a full house,’ says Vaughan.
‘It’s quite poetic really. We’ve already sold over 7,000 tickets for the game against Bath and we’re hoping it will sell out. We’ve got guys like GJ van Velze, Andy Goode and Chris Pennell coming down to clap on the new team so it will be like they are passing on the baton.
‘We’re hoping that Ollie and Ted come up with Bath and those guys will get a hero’s welcome. It’s exciting because we don’t know what the team’s going to look like and that’s quite unique.
‘We’ve seen how emotional the fans have been about the club coming back It’s going to be a phenomenal rebirth of Worcester Warriors.’
