On one level the challenge is obvious. Beat Bristol over two legs in the next eight days and we’ll be in the Premiership. After Wednesday’s first leg at Bristol’s ground, Ashton Gate, and next Wednesday at Sixways, a difference of one point will be enough and Worcester will celebrate. No doubt about that.
Being at home for the second leg helps. A lap of honour thanking fans who have stuck by us and then, in boardroom and bar, the only worry will be getting to work the next morning. Job done? Not really.
Without getting preachy, you only have to look at London Welsh to see that for the successful side life for the next few months won’t be a bed of roses. The bigger challenge is to take a Championship side into the Premiership and then to make it better. Whether that is now or in another 12 months, that is the premium. Go up, spiral around and crash land and next time the job will be a whole lot worse.
It’s not that we don’t want to go up. Heavens no. But we (and Bristol) need to make it stick and, after rising through the ranks, only Exeter have managed to build on promotion in modern times.
I’ll come to them later, but consider this. In other circumstances Worcester could have Dylan Hartley, Tom Wood, Matt Mullan, Matt Kvesic, Graham Kitchener, Miles Benjamin and Marcel Garvey on the books. All and more passed through, leaving for various reasons. Wood because he didn’t believe, no matter how strong his performances, that he could change the established order, Kvesic because he didn’t think Worcester would make him a Test player.
By and large, guys leave clubs for two reasons: to get better or to meet their aspirations. Either way, there has to be a conveyor belt of young guys coming through or being bought in at the expense of older guys (see Tom Wood) who understandably are reluctant to make way or to smooth the path of the guy looking for their shirt with helpful advice.
Not so long ago, Worcester signed the wing Rico Gear to go alongside a couple of All Blacks in Greg Rawlinson and Sam Tuitupou, who were already in the side with the Fiji international Netani Talei and Samoa’s Loki Crichton. Memorably Chris Latham, arguably the best player in the world at one time, spent two seasons at Sixways, but the day the Australian announced he would not be taking up the option of a third year, Worcester were 11th in the league, a position uncomfortably familiar.
Under the leadership of Cecil Duckworth, Worcester had made remarkable strides for a city of around 100,000, but you could argue that those ambitious signings had not fulfilled their purpose. You spend big money to enhance a side that is already going places and has its own identity. Do otherwise and you’re chucking cash into a black hole.
Last season there were times when guys earning millions between them couldn’t get into the Worcester side. Effectively we were fighting relegation with a £1.5m side and at the end of the season players, some earning £300,000 a year, left. In their place is a club with a settled coaching staff – guys like Carl Hogg, Simon Cross and Mefin Davies, with whom I’d previously worked. There is Nick Johnston, the high performance director who worked alongside Philippe Saint-André when Sale were league champions and then was at Northampton when they went from the Championship to where they are today, and Sam Vesty, a fourth generation Leicester Tiger who chose to work here rather than there – and a lot of young players who will find it hard in the Premiership but will grow into it.
Again without getting too preachy about the merits of “organic” growth, we have spent a lot dotting five academies around Birmingham and the Midlands and the message seems to be getting through to those guys who understand that it’s better playing for a Championship side than being the third or fourth string at a Premiership outfit sitting out the action, hoping that the inevitable injuries mean game time.
Guys who turned us down a year ago are now asking us if they can take up the offer and players offered contracts elsewhere are coming for half the money. Hanging on to Chris Pennell, who could have had the pick of the Premiership, helped massively, but others see the conveyor belt is working at Worcester.
That it will be churning out Premiership/Test players I have no doubt. The question is how soon and here tapping into the experiences of Rob Baxter and Exeter, particularly regarding the development of local talents such as Jack Nowell, Dave Ewers, Henry Slade, Sam Hill and Luke Cowan‑Dickie, has helped
Bristol have beaten us twice this season. We led for much of those two matches, as we did the league for much of the season, losing to a late try at Ashton Gate on the opening day while conceding a couple of late yellows on the final day of the regular season. Tickets will be worth the money.
If we and Andy Robinson’s side have been favourites to go up all along, I don’t think either is yet a Premiership side. But we will be.
