Worcester facing winter of discontent - Andy Goode

It may still be September and today is only the first day of autumn officially but Worcester could be heading for a ‘winter of discontent’ with problems mounting both on and off the field.

They face a daunting run of league fixtures between now and the beginning of December with no points on the board after the opening three rounds of the Premiership campaign and a dark cloud of uncertainty hanging over the club’s ownership situation.

The stakes are high and this is a massive weekend at the bottom because London Irish have got their first home game of the season at the Madejski Stadium against Northampton and they’ll fancy themselves, so Worcester could get cut adrift already at this early stage of the season.

I know two of the top teams have come to town but the bottom line is that Worcester have played three and lost three with two of those at home.

Exeter are one of the best attacking teams in the Premiership but you don’t expect to ship 41 points at home and they need to get back some pride in the jersey because Sixways should be a tough place to go and it was like a walk in the park for the Chiefs last week.

When you are looking to stay in the top flight you need to build a team from the basics of defence, set piece and kicking game and you can win games by doing those really well. Worcester have only scored three tries in three games, so their attack isn’t firing either, but they’ve leaked 100 points already and defence is certainly their key issue.

They’ve got a big local derby today at Kingsholm, a place where they have only won once in Premiership history back in 2009, and they need a big performance.

If they don’t get one, it is not going to get any easier for them in the next couple of months. They face Saracens at home next before travelling to Bath and Harlequins, welcoming Northampton to Sixways and then going on the road to Welford Road. That is a horrendous fixture list.

As a Worcester fan, you could look at that run of games and wonder where the next win is coming from. London Irish have won a game and are sat there with five points, while Worcester are pointless, so the pressure is all of a sudden off the Exiles and firmly on the Warriors.

We all got excited in week one when London Irish beat Harlequins but I think the same old patterns will develop as the season goes on and London Irish and Worcester will be the two teams battling at the bottom to stay in the division.

Worcester fans won’t want to hear that but Gary Gold has acknowledged that relegation is a possibility himself this week and he is just being realistic. He sees that the club has great potential in the long-term and going down wouldn’t have to spell the end. We have seen both Quins and Saints go down and come back to win the Premiership in recent years.

The club has reportedly lost somewhere in the region of £16 million in the past three years and that is a horrendous amount of money to lose for any business. It’s difficult to then go out and spend big coin on players who are going to make a massive amount of difference.

Something needs to change and there is a lot chat behind the scenes about selling the club and I know Ed Griffiths has been involved in trying to get a consortium together to buy the club but that uncertainty isn’t helping the team on the pitch.

Players read the papers just like everyone else does. They will have seen that the club is up for sale and has supposedly lost a lot of money in recent years and some of them will be thinking about where that leaves them.

Their livelihoods are at stake and it’s inevitable that they’ll be thinking about their mortgages and supporting their families as well as the rugby. When you’re in a bad run of results, things only snowball and more questions get asked and the senior players will want answers from the board members regarding what direction the club is going in.

Having played there for three years, I have got so much respect for Cecil Duckworth, the club’s president and main long-time benefactor, but he has taken a step back in recent years and I sometimes think there is an issue with the rugby intellect on the board in terms of having played the game.

There are some very successful businessmen involved in the club but some of the rugby decisions that have been made over the last few years perhaps haven’t been the best.

The sooner the ownership issue is resolved, the better but it could be a long, hard winter for the Warriors on the pitch if they don’t show some significant signs of improvement when they make the short trip down the M5 to Gloucester tonight.