by Last October, when Worcester Warriors Women suddenly withdrew from Women’s Rugby in the Premiership, Stef Evans made a promise to herself.
The Canadian forward was on a modest retainer at Sixways but as she began to shop around for a new club, she was no longer willing to play for free.
“I can’t continually blow my life up just playing rugby,” says Evans, who has played in the women’s top flight for five years. “I’m happy to play for a net zero. But I promised myself that I wouldn’t play for debt anymore.”
Worcester was one of the founding teams in the Premier 15s (rebranded at the start of the season to PWR) and one of the first women’s clubs in the league to pay players, but its owners, Cube International, unexpectedly withdrew its financial support – and a 10-year business plan for the team – a few weeks into the 2023-24 season.
When the Worcester-based business took over at the start of 2023, the optics looked positive. The company’s chairman, Andy Moss, even made the bold prediction that the women’s team could be commercially viable within the next five years. Ten months later, Moss made the “challenging and emotional decision” to withdraw the team from the restarted Premier League, days before the start of the series.
Four months on from the dark evening when the squad was suddenly brought in from a training session and told the story, Sports telegraph he brought together five former players who were all affected by the club’s demise.
They are all keen to share their stories in the hope that this saga will never happen again and are calling for further scrutiny of the business models required to run top female teams.
Worcester initially failed in their bid to be part of England’s premier rugby competition in December 2022 due to the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the sale of the men’s club. They were found again three months after Moss drew up his ambitious business plan.
“They did two financial checks, they walk in on a Monday evening and decide they can’t afford us anymore,” says Siobhan McCarthy, who joined Worcester two seasons ago.
The highly-rated Irish second tier is on a three-month trial deal with Gloucester-Hartpury but is yet to make any game time this season. “He [Moss] They signed a 10-year deal with the PWR and said, ‘Yeah, that’s it’.”
Evans, frowning at an agreement, enters. “So what is that process [around owner checks] and is it changing?”
A spokesman for the Rugby Football Union said: “Cube International provided the RFU with a business plan demonstrating its ability to fund the Warriors Women’s team. Cube decided to withdraw the team from the league due to changing business priorities, not funding issues. With the men’s team going into administration, Cube’s support has enabled the Women’s Warriors team to continue operating.”
Telegraph Sport has contacted Moss for comment. When the news broke last year, he told the BBC that the women’s team was “not financially viable” and “the support is not there”.
More than half of Worcester’s squad from last season are yet to secure deals at new clubs, including a handful of England under-20s.
Laura Keates, England’s 2014 World Cup winner and widely regarded as one of the best to emerge from the English women’s game, is among those without a contract.
“We had 23 players who were going to play regularly in the Premier League,” says Keates, the frustration evident in his voice. “Whether or not they get game time is one of our biggest frustrations. The PWR and the Rugby Football Union are talking about growing the women’s game, but in reality you’ve lost 40 players.”
Keates, 35, was recovering from a serious knee injury she sustained during the 2022 Women’s World Cup in New Zealand when the club folded. The qualified dentist was able to access a hardship fund through the Rugby Players’ Association but, due to her foundation dental year being based in a clinic in Malvern, joining a new club was problematic.
“It was really tough,” says Keates. “I’m going back to Worcester a few days a week because that’s where our physio is run. It’s just a shell of a place.”
Evans’ 90-minute commute to his new club, Leicester Tigers, is modest compared to some of his other former team-mates – winger Vicky Laflin makes the four-and-a-half-hour journey to Ealing Trailfinders after a “stressful” time trying to find a new club on the eve of the new season.
The former England Under-20 player has been at Sixways for six years and last-ditch talks with other clubs have been “stressful”. “You couldn’t trade or negotiate,” says Laflin, who spent all six years of his elite rugby career at Sixways. “It was like, take what’s available and be grateful because all the clubs were full.”
The PWR left Worcester’s players out of the £190,000 cap in an attempt to encourage other clubs to accommodate them. Many, however, ended up with voluntary contracts or, in McCarthy’s case, trial contracts. Few people are getting what they had at Worcester.
Keates, who still has ambitions to add to his 62 Red Rose caps, claims there could have been better regulation of what England players can command within the salary cap.
“England players are paid reasonably well, and then they get the highest amounts from their clubs,” says Keates. “You might be a Welsh international or an Irish international and I’ve heard of them in some teams not being paid anything. We talk about growing the game and everyone getting their fair share but that’s a crazy way to have a league.
“They’re trying to grow English women’s rugby, you’ve got a huge tiered system where some people are getting paid a lot and some people are getting less. How does that allow for balanced growth of the game?”
Meanwhile, non-English players are feeling the pressure. Portugal-capped former Worcester goalkeeper Sara Moreira has taken the big decision to sign for Sale to preserve her rugby career. She now makes the five-hour journey from Worcester to the club up north three times a week.
“I’m a self-employed tiler,” says Moreira. “Luckily for me, I’m working with someone at the moment, but that means I can only work three or four days. The other days are half days, which is not possible.
“I wanted to grow my business on my own but it’s hard to tell someone. ‘I’ll come and knock your house down but I can only work on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.’ I had to make a lot of changes, which put me in a financially unstable position.”
As the PWR moves towards professionalism, Evans, Keates, Laflin, Moreira and McCarthy do not want to share their stories in vain. “That’s the saddest thing about all of this,” says Evans. “It feels like a lot of people who have spent years of their lives playing, working, building this series, that their investment – my investment – is not protected.” The group insists that history cannot be repeated.
