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A couple of months ago, not long after Worcester’s return from bankruptcy was announced, a lifelong fan called Malc was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors told him he would not live long enough to see his club’s comeback.
He was put in touch with Matt Everard, the director of rugby, who visited Malc's home in the city, spending an afternoon learning what Sixways means to the community.
‘I spent a good few hours at Malc’s house, having a cup of tea with him and his wife,’ revealed Everard. ‘I took him a couple of tickets for this game and told him straight: “I will see you at the Coventry match on October 4th. You’re going to be there”.’
On Saturday lunchtime, Malc and 9,000 others made an emotional return for the club’s first competitive match in three years.
The traffic down Warriors Way has never felt so welcome. Fans jumped out of their cars stuck in the jams and stomped along the soggy verges to arrive in time to watch Coventry kick-off.
‘It’s been a long wait,’ said the stadium announcer.
Worcester Warriors enjoyed a dream return as they came from behind to beat Coventry 29-19
The former Premiership club is celebrating its rebirth after surviving administration, financial ruin and the threat of extinction - and the Warriors are competing in Champ Rugby
Fans roared the Warriors on at Sixways Stadium as the team finally returned on Saturday
It has been an ugly journey, thanks to a couple of cowboy owners who robbed the community of their club. Broken promises, unpaid creditors and an abandoned institution. A bit of traffic was the least of their worries.
They piled into the club shop to stock up on the new kit. There are still photographs of Ted Hill and Ollie Lawrence behind the tills. The club’s bank balance finally began to tick over, after the place was left with £30million of debt back in 2022.
Gone are the likes of Ted, Ollie and Duhan van der Merwe. In are the likes of Tom Seabrook, Khalik Kareem and Billy Twelvetrees, whose fighting spirit helped the club battle back from a 19-7 half-time deficit.
Business was booming at the food trucks in the new fan zone, queuing for burgers from the local farm. In the chairman’s lounge, they served up the posh stuff. Conor O’Shea, director of performance for the RFU, sat around a table eating sirloin steak with representatives from the Champ.
Worcester may well be the club who can help repair relations in English rugby. An afternoon spent with a passionate, sold-out crowd may convince O’Shea that pulling up the drawbridge is not the best idea.
Executives in the PREM want the top-flight to become a closed shop, abandoning relegation, whilst retaining power to cherry-pick clubs which could join an expanding group of franchises.
Worcester and Doncaster are the only clubs in the second division who meet the minimum standards for promotion but it remains a changing picture. If they win promotion over the next two years and the PREM expands to 12 teams, what happens when they decide they have enough clubs?
‘The Premiership are not the guardians of English rugby, as much as they’d like to believe it,’ said one of the men at the table. At Friday’s RFU meeting, it was the main item on the agenda
Warriors scored 22 unanswered points to come back to beat Coventry on the opening day
Matt Everard (above), Worcester's director of rugby, visited the home of a lifelong Warriors fan who had been diagnosed with cancer to learn what Sixways means to the community
This league has been a proving ground for the likes of Ollie Chessum and Henry Pollock, nurturing the ecosystem of English rugby. But the Championship clubs are threatening to stop taking PREM players on loan if the door is slammed shut.
Yet here at Sixways, the fans who turned out were not interested in politics. It was a day to live in the moment.
‘I tell the guys we can make this whatever we want it to be,’ said Everard. ‘There are no current culture or values or any of those buzzwords that people use. We can turn this place into whatever we want to turn it into.
‘That starts from how we speak to each other, how hard we work, how much we laugh together and what we do on a Saturday. We speak about how this is such a unique opportunity, so don’t let it pass you by, make it what you want to be.’
Everard has built his squad from scratch, from sitting in an empty meeting room a few months ago with the names of 650 of target players pinned up on the wall.
There were nerves and jitters from the hosts in the early stages. Worcester will wear a target on their backs this season as one of the sport’s big brands, even though there are teams on bigger budgets and pre-existing relationships.
Matt Rogerson led the team out through a puff of blue and yellow smoke and they showed scrappy fight which will endear them to their new supporters.
They have already sold 4,100 season tickets for the coming season. All desperate to fill the void that was left in their lives. Same faces, same seats, new beginning.
Warriors showed fight during the game which will endear them to their new supporters
Sixways Stadium was sold out as 9,000 fans flocked to the stadium to cheer on the team
They watched their hometown hero Matt Kvesic score in the second half, levelling the score to 19-all. Then they roared as Louis Brown crunched Oli Morris on the try-line to prevent what was almost a match-winning try for Coventry.
Worcester’s fans know all too well that sporting stories can have cruel plot twists. Yet this one had a happy ending, with a late penalty from Will Reed and a try from Ashley Challenger.
Malc was not the only one who thought he might never see the day that Worcester made their comeback. The victory made it taste just that little bit sweeter.
‘Come on you Warriors,’ swirled around the stands, as the place quickly got back into its old rhythm.
