As many as a quarter of Worcester's squad could leave rugby

As many as a quarter of the Worcester Warriors squad could end up leaving rugby as the beleaguered side go through the process of administration which could ultimately see the side no longer exist.

Worcester have been relegated from the Gallagher Premiership and suspended from the Premiership Rugby Cup for the remainder of the 2022-23 season.

The Warriors’ Premiership future had been left in doubt after the club was partially liquidated on Wednesday, with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) pursuing unpaid tax in the region of £6 million.

Wednesday’s ruling instructed that WRFC Players Ltd, a subsidiary of WRFC Trading Ltd through which players and some staff are paid, be wound up. A winding-up petition against WRFC Trading Ltd, which remains in administration, has been suspended.

Club captain Ted Hill, Ollie Lawrence, Fergus Lee-Warner and Valeriy Morozov had already joined Bath on loan.

Speaking to RugbyPass on The Offload Podcast, England centre Lawrence says as many as a quarter of the squad could end up leaving professional rugby altogether.

“There’ll be a quarter of the squad now that will consider either A: Stopping playing rugby and finding other jobs, or B) retiring. There’ll be another fraction of the squad who will drop down to the Championship or try and find a club and maybe get their salary halved.

“The boys that are in those brackets of £50 to £100k, once their salary gets halved, once you start getting bills coming out, you have mortgages and savings, that gets stripped down and suddenly you’re leaving to your means. Then you get stripped half again and you’ve got to re-mortgage your house and you’ve got to move to a new city. It’s just crazy times and it’s one we never expected to happen.

“I don’t think anyone saw this coming. Now going into administration, we don’t know the consequences even if did mange to get someone come out of the woodwork and buy the club and everything be sorted. The PRL and RFU Premiership relegation would terminate quite a lot of the players contracts in itself, if they wanted to.”

Lawrence had a word for teammate Joe Batley, who has been quite vocal over the last few weeks.

“He came from Bristol and came and gave his everything. He now has a young son and a family here that he obviously has tried to build on. Now that’s been taken away from him and that has now effected his kid’s future. You can obviously understand the frustration and the anger from a lot of boys, but there isn’t much we can do now. That’s the unfortunate thing. We talked about player power but there isn’t much we can do.”

additional reporting PA