From this morning's TOL :
Worcester Warriors staff will not be paid wages on time
Alex Lowe, Rugby Correspondent
The players and staff at Worcester Warriors have been informed that their salaries will not be paid on time this week because the club’s bank accounts have been frozen. The players can now give notice of their intention to leave the club.
This situation was widely expected but serves to deepen the crisis at Sixways and cast further doubt on the club’s ability to demonstrate it has the funds to participate in the Gallagher Premiership season.
Worcester owe at least £1.2 million by the middle of this week: two payments of £320,000 to HM Revenue & Customs from an overall tax debt of £6 million plus the monthly wage bill, which is £500,000 to £600,000 just for the playing squad.
Colin Golding, one of Worcester’s two co-owners, wrote to employees to confirm their wages would not be paid.
“As you will all no doubt know, the club’s bank accounts were frozen shortly after the HMRC petition was issued, meaning we are not able to access those funds to help meet payroll. Therefore we do not have the money at this moment to fulfil payroll tomorrow,” Golding wrote.
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It is understood players now have 14 days to give notice of their intention to leave the club unless their salaries are paid. It is understood there is also a mechanism whereby players could leave immediately.
Worcester have some attractive assets in Duhan van der Merwe and Rory Sutherland, the Scotland pair, plus Ollie Lawrence and Ted Hill, the England duo.
The difficulty will be finding a new club who have room in the salary cap and can afford the outlay. Kyle Hatherall, Worcester’s highly-rated flanker, appears to be on his way to France. If Lawrence and Hill were to follow, it would halt their England careers under the RFU’s selection regulations.
Fin Smith, the fly half who qualifies for England and Scotland, is due to join Northampton Saints in 2023 but the move could be brought forward by a year.
Premiership Rugby needs assurances by Thursday that Worcester will be able to participate in the season so there is time to reshape the fixture schedule. The club has regularly been late in paying its suppliers and employees this year.
Worcester have three interested potential buyers, including a group run by Jim O’Toole, who was the club’s chief executive between 2015 and 2017, which includes backing from American businessmen.
O’Toole confirmed on Sunday that his consortium — which has backing from former Ireland under-20 player James Sandford, who now runs a health and performance company for athletes called Atlas SportsTech — had proposed a funding model to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
DCMS are Worcester’s main creditors after the club took out a £14 million loan from them as part of the Sport Winter Survival Package during the pandemic.
O’Toole’s consortium — which has registered a business called Atlas Worcester Warriors Rugby Club Limited — is committed to paying off the government loan, but insist the club would have to enter administration “immediately” for any takeover deal to go through.
It is understood the DCMS is not going to push the club into administration, but the government wants to see the RFU and Premiership Rugby take a more definitive position on the growing crisis. Worcester’s owners Goldring and Jason Whittingham are reluctant to place the club into administration and wrote to players last week to say that every effort was being made to find a solution. A proposal to merge the club with Wasps with matches to be played at Sixways is believed to be “dead in the water”. Local reports stated that Wasps rejected the plan.
Time is running out for Worcester. The official Premiership launch is held at Twickenham on Thursday and Worcester’s first league fixture is due to be away at London Irish on September 10.
It is still uncertain whether Worcester will be able to field a team. The players have returned to training and are preparing for a pre-season friendly in Inverness which is being funded by their shirt sponsor.
If Worcester enter administration they could be docked 35 points or removed from the Premiership entirely.
The uncertainty surrounding Worcester’s future has led Saracens to bring forward their pre-season friendly against Ampthill to September 4 to ensure they are ready to play on the opening weekend of the Premiership season.
Saracens currently have a bye in the first round, to be played September 9-11, but if Worcester were to drop out of the league then the Premiership would return to a 12-team division.
“Sadly with ongoing uncertainty around Worcester Warriors, we have moved our friendly as we may have to be ready to play our opening Premiership match earlier than scheduled,” the club said.
Always a Wasp