Diamond confident Worcester will see out season
By Mitch Phillips
LONDON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Worcester director of rugby Steve Diamond says he is 100 percent confident that they will play a full Premiership season despite the financial turmoil at the club as they seek new owners and still face possible administration.
However, he also warned that every club in the league is operating at "precarious levels" and that others are also likely to struggle to repay debts.
Worcester officials said they will be paying their players on Thursday and would soon pay part of the salaries of the rest of the club's staff, staving off the immediate threat that they would not be able to play their first scheduled match against London Irish on Sept. 10.
They withdrew from a friendly against Glasgow on Friday as they deal with a winding up petition by British tax authorities over unpaid tax, believed to be more than 6 million pounds ($6.91 million), that has led to their accounts being frozen. The club were also given a 14 million pounds loan by the Department for Culture, Media & Sport during the COVID pandemic and are negotiating with potential new buyers.
Asked if the club would be able to fulfil their fixtures, Diamond said: "I'm 100 percent confident that will happen. We will definitely play the game at London Irish, we will be going on our own coach, we won´t be going by bike."
"I'm confident that the hurdle we've got to get over (paying the salaries) will be paid by the time we get back to Worcester, then I don't foresee it happening again," said Diamond, who was speaking at the official launch of the Premiership season at Twickenham.
"I am pretty sure that if we manage to get through this, money does start coming in through the turnstiles. The two current owners are actively seeking to re-finance or sell it and I will leave them to it. "I've spoken to two potential organisations who would require me to work for them. What I will say is that the current owners and all the staff from cleaners to cooks to sales staff to kit men, have not complained."
The Worcester situation cast a gloom over the launch, with organisers keen to remind everyone of last season's exciting finale when Leicester triumphed over Saracens with a last-gasp Freddie Burns drop goal, but with Premiership CEO Simon Massie-Taylor forced instead to focus on the "elephant in the room".
"It has been a very intense period over the last few weeks," he said. "But everyone involved in working through this challenge is working collaboratively. "I'd like to thank the players and the RPA (the players' union) and clearly the payment of players is in itself an important thing, because their employment rights would be triggered at some point if they didn't get paid. But then insurance is a key thing as well and that's what we've been working through with them and the RPA."
The Premiership as a whole has long struggled to balance the books, with relatively small TV and sponsorship incomes and crowds but huge playing squads.
Diamond, formerly coach of Sale, said the latest issue should be a "rude awakening to the players and other clubs" that you "can´t just turn up and get paid decent wages; there´s got to be some return on it.
"It´s probably the first time for some of the playing group at Worcester that they´ve had to be humble," he said. "They´ve had big-name players and coaches, but they´ve not really delivered. They´ve finished out of the bottom two once or twice in the last 20 years, with rock-star budgets.
"So it´s historical what´s happened at Worcester - it´s not just in the last 12 months. They´ve always had this sort of also-ran tag but paying superstar money. Since I´ve come in, that has radically changed. They´re a hard-working group now, but they see how delicate it is."
($1 = 0.8681 pounds) (Reporting by Mitch Phillips, editing by Toby Davis)
