If you are reading this prior to December 25th, I need to ask you a few questions:
Have you bought all the food for your Christmas Dinner yet?
Has the dog been out on the walk you promised it 4 hours ago?
Are the presents all bought, wrapped and dispatched to Santa?
Did you remember to remove the gravy stain on your Christmas tie from last year?
If you are mostly answering in the negative then I think you need to reassess your priorities.
However, if you are sitting smugly with a glass of wine, safe in the knowledge that you are ready for the seasonal excess then do, please, read on.
Warriors Update
As many of you already know, the trust has been in regular contact with the current owners of Atlas Worcester Warriors - ie Loxwood Holdings Limited. This has continued since our launch event and we have further meetings planned for the New Year. We believe there is a unique opportunity to resurrect the Worcester Warriors men's team in the season commencing 2025/26, especially given renewed calls for the return of Wasps, London Irish, Worcester & Jersey from the likes of Conor O'Shea (RFU's executive director of performance rugby) & Steve Diamond in his role as RFU advisor. If we miss that deadline or the RFU's plans for Tier 1 & 2 rugby do not come to pass, then it may well be a significantly more challenging task to accomplish our primary aim. WWST will be seeking clarification from the Championship Clubs on their attitude towards a phoenix Worcester Warriors, given their published statement from yesterday:
For now, we would like to repeat what we said on November 17, that the Championship clubs are not interested in a league that follows a franchise or selection-based model.
That means a league in which clubs are chosen to be part of a new tier two because of a commercial, geographic or financial consideration, rather than gaining membership by virtue of promotion and relegation. Meritocracy is a longstanding principle of rugby in this country, even if franchises might work elsewhere and in other sports. Basing entry to Tier 2 on minimum operating standards or on the perceived importance of their “brand”, rather than merit, would deprioritise the quality of rugby, of coaching and player development in Tier 2 at a time when Tier 1 is already cutting squads back.
We continue to be supportive of Loxwood Holdings and believe that they have the necessary expertise, desire and ambition to enable Worcester Warriors' return to elite level rugby at Sixways Stadium. The trust will be holding a strategic planning meeting in early January, to better define the methods we will use to help us achieve our aims. It cannot be stressed enough that the best way to ensure that the voice of supporters is not just heard, but listened to and respected is to grow our membership. So, if any of you were thinking of joining, or of persuading a friend to do so, please tick that job off and boost your chances of sitting back in your favourite seat come September 2025.
Logo
We are pleased to say that the overwhelming majority of the feedback we have received on our new logo has been positive. The idea of producing WWST merchandise has also been well received; we have made some preliminary enquiries about T-shirts and Mugs in particular. Further updates will follow in early 2024.
There will, of course, always be differences in opinion but, overall, the simplicity of the primary logo has won people over. The major benefit of having our own copyrighted design however, is that we can change things around to suit certain occasions and promote different events. Given that we are used to having home and away fixtures, we have also produced a secondary effort in appropriate Warriors' colours:
Rugby Events
You may have noticed a new page on the website. Our first "away trip" is planned for January 13th at Bournville RFC. Shake off the January blues by coming with WWST to watch a National 2 West match and enjoy a drink and a laugh with like-minded people. It's certainly a great excuse to get some of your Warriors' kit on again and dream, not what might have been, but what is to come.
Trust Communications
Lastly, just to flag up that we will be changing our email address over the next week or so. Once we have gone live, the new address will be posted; in the meantime we are still contactable through the website or via warriorstrust@outlook.com
Have a safe and happy Christmas and thank you to all for your many kind messages of support over the last six months or so.
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