Operations SCRUM & CHAMP

Oct 25

5 min read

Updated: 7 days ago

Volunteers Required

WWST have been asked to help with the recruitment of volunteers for a major incident re-enactment exercise taking place at Sixways Stadium next month. The following is a briefing from staff at WMAS. If you have time on the day in question please do sign up as a volunteer and, if not, please spread the word amongst colleagues, friends and family:

West Midlands Ambulance Service and its partner agencies are facilitating a major incident exercise to test their staff, capabilities, and polices & procedures to a simulated incident.

WMAS are looking for 60 volunteers to support this exercise by giving their time to act the role of either a patient or a bystander.

The details of the exercise are below:

Date: Thursday 19^th November 2026

Time: 0800 - 1400

Location: Sixways Stadium WR3 8ZE

Light refreshments will be provided.

Certificates of attendance will be provided to volunteers to evidence their participation.

Volunteers can sign up by completing the online form at the link below:

MAJOR INCIDENT VOLUNTEERS REGISTER HERE

Please note that this is the ONLY sign-up method. Any volunteers who arrive at the exercise without signing up on this form, will sadly be turned away. This is due to security restrictions and exercise planning constraints.

Joining instructions will be sent nearer the time.

NB - Registrations will close at 4pm on Saturday 31st October. We would suggest signing up ASAP if you are interested as tbey may close earlier if sufficient numbers have been attained.

Champ Rugby Fan Forum

The RFU team who run Champ Rugby have this season taken the unprecedented step of establishing a forum for Champ Rugby Club Supporter representatives to have a voice in the future management of the league. Supporter representatives have been recruited via their individual clubs and WWST were asked to nominate a participant by the Worcester Warriors managment. As Chairman, I have taken on that role.

You may wonder who the 14 supporter representatives will be interacting with as part of this forum. The "on-the-ground" staff of Champ Rugby are all employed by the RFU. My understanding is that there are three full-time employees solely devoted to the running of our league:

Brian Facer - Head of Champ Rugby

Brian spent nearly 12 years of his career at Northampton Saints, becoming their Commercial Director in 2013. He left to join London Irish as their CEO between 2017 and 2021. Following this he was CEO at British Cycling until October 2022.

Garry Miller - Champ Rugby Marketing & Communications Manager

Most noticeably on his CV, Garry was Communications Manager for the Rugby Football League from 2014 to 2018, since then he has also had stints at the BBC and the Trust Alliance Group (formerly the Ombudsman Service Ltd.)

Sian Haynes - Champ Rugby Community Engagement Manager

Prior to taking on her current role in 2025, Sian was Head of Community at Northampton Saints for nearly 20 years. She is responsible for working with the Champ clubs, supporting the growth and development of the league through the delivery of community engagement programmes.

It has been proposed that the Champ Rugby Fan Forum sits quarterly. The first of these sessions will take place this coming Monday. This is the outline that we have received from the Champ Rugby team:

"The purpose of the Forum is simple: to give supporters a voice in how we develop and grow the competition. We want to hear your views, ideas and honest feedback on the things that affect the league as a whole. It's important to be clear that the Forum isn't intended to deal with individual club issues, which are best addressed directly with your clubs. Our focus will be on the wider competition and how we can make it better for everyone.

Our first meeting will be an opportunity to get to know each other. We'll introduce the Champ team, explain what we're working on and share some of the progress we've made so far.

More importantly, we want to hear from you. We're now approaching the end of our first block of fixtures (sic), so it's a great opportunity to get your thoughts on what's working, what isn't and where we can improve. That includes everything from broadcast and communications to matchday experience, marketing and community engagement.

We won't always agree on everything, but that's absolutely fine. What matters is that we have open, constructive conversations and work together to make Champ Rugby the best competition it can be."

I and many others have previously been overtly critical of the RFU for their lack of communication in general and with supporters in particular. It is refreshing to see this initiative taking place and the Champ Rugby team are to be applauded for their efforts. Of the 14 club representatives, WWST are already in regular contact with about 50% of the participants so I am hopeful that the meetings will be constructive and cohesive. As always, if there are issues to do with the running of the league which you wish to be aired, do feed back via our Contact Form or by email to trust@wwst.co.uk

Action at Sixways

Our half-back partnership of Will Lane and Will Reed will be joining the Warriors Review event at Sixways, also on Monday evening. There will be a look-back at the 25/26 play-offs including match clips, analysis and a player's perspective of those tumultuous few weeks. The second half of the event will concentrate on the opening block of fixtures from this season including the impressive 37 tries scored thus far. Doors open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Entrance is by ticket only but there is no charge for admission. Click here to secure your tickets.

Friday night sees Worcester Warriors return to action on the pitch, after a fallow weekend, with an intriguing fixture against the world's oldest rugby club, Blackheath. The last time the two sides met at Sixways was in November 1998 when the home side prevailed 21 - 9 in front of a crowd of just over 2000 supporters. It was a challenging season for Blackheath who were eventually relegated with just ten points, having lost the reverse fixture 3 - 51. Worcester were then on an upward trajectory, finishing third and then second for four consecutive years until clinching promotion to the Premiership in 2004 with an unbeaten record.

This time around newly promoted Blackheath have performed admirably, beating Doncaster Knights in the third round and racking up 3 losing bonus points from their remaining games. Warriors meanwhile sit atop the table as the only unbeaten side. Friday night under the lights never fails to produce a fantastic atmosphere. Definitely a game not to miss. Click on the Warrior to secure your seats:

WWST Merch

Visit WWST at our Fanzone cabin on Friday night to purchase sensibly priced products including our lightweight seat pads, to protect bums from the rain, and our new CarryAround drinks carriers, to protect pints from spillage,

All profits will be directly used to support the new Worcester Warriors Academy.