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Worcester Warriors renamed and will not play in RFU Championship
By PA
Worcester Warriors will be renamed Sixways Rugby as ownership group Atlas revealed the club will not feature in next season’s Championship.
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The Rugby Football Union set a deadline of February 14 for the Warriors to provide evidence they had met relevant conditions to participate in the second-tier competition.
But director Jim O’Toole, who alongside former London Irish player James Sandford led the consortium that took over Worcester, says the Warriors would instead be merging with fourth-tier side Stourbridge.
“There were a number of key clauses in the contract that we couldn’t sign,” O’Toole, Worcester’s former chief executive, told BBC Hereford & Worcester.
“This decision will clearly upset and annoy a number of people. The sad fact of life is that the Worcester Warriors brand and the Worcester Warriors business is gone.
“The name sadly will disappear. We are rebranding as Sixways Rugby.”
Atlas are now set to invest in Stourbridge RFC’s first team in order to guide them up the leagues. Currently they are bottom of National League 2 West with just a single win in 18 games and a 13-point gap separate them from the team above them in 13th.
“We will invest in their semi-professional first team and they will play at Sixways,” said O’Toole. “We will invest significantly to get them through the leagues. The plan will be to reach the Championship by 2026.
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“We hope to be able to call upon former players to come in and help us move through the divisions. Some of the older guys who can still mix it in that league, as well as the players who were breaking through from the academy.”
The Worcester Warriors brand will now live on through Warriors Women, who last November secured RFU sanction and finance for their Allianz Premier 15 season. Existing team sponsors and a local Worcester business underwrote the team’s operating costs.
Former Worcester Warriors second row Joe Batley wrote: “Gutted, Worcester Warriors will always hold a piece of my heart.”
Gutted, Worcester Warriors will always hold a piece of my heart.
— Joe Batley (@banterwithbats) February 9, 2023
More to follow…
