Worcester Warriors: Ex-boss Steve Diamond takes charge of Sixways takeover bid

Steve Diamond was in charge of first team affairs from January, having first arrived at Sixways in November 2021Getty Images

Steve Diamond took charge of first-team affairs in January, having first arrived at Sixways in November 2021

Ex-Worcester Warriors director of rugby Steve Diamond is at the head of one of the two main consortiums looking to take over at Sixways.

Diamond, 54, who has financial backing from two as yet unnamed investors, will have former Leicester chief executive Simon Cohen as part of his consortium.

"My goal is a sustainable business able to compete back in the Premiership within three or four years," he said.

"Sixways Village is what we will call the business if we're successful."

Diamond added: "Simon has been very helpful to me with the experience he has of building a hotel when he was at Leicester.

"But, for those who think this sounds like a property deal, that is vastly secondary to what we plan to evolve over the next two to five years."

Worcester went into administration at the end of September after which they were suspended for the rest of the season and relegated to the Championship, since when London-based financial insolvency specialists Begbies Traynor have been in charge of running the club.

"You've got to have a certain amount of charisma about you to convince new players to come to the Championship," said Diamond. "Warriors have already lost 20 players since entering administration.

"It's unchartered waters for me to go into the Championship, where I've never coached and never played. But I've got a vision that could revolutionise the Championship and make people in the Premiership look down and think "these guys are running sustainable businesses."

Speaking at an online news conference on Thursday, Diamond added that he has already presented details of a reborn Worcester club's survival package, both to Premiership chief executive Simon Massie-Taylor and his Rugby Football Union counterpart Bill Sweeney.

That includes bringing back into the fold Worcester's amateur club next door, from which Warriors first evolved with the help of Cecil Duckworth's money in the late 1980s.

"We have agreed a joint venture for maintenance of all sporting grounds within the Sixways Village and the creation of pathways for both men and women's rugby," he said.

Trevor Owens - BBC Sport

Former Worcester CEO Jim O'Toole is the front man of the leading consortium hoping to take over the club

"I think there's more than one horse in the race. But I've got my investors in place and my senior management team and my high performance department - and recruitment has to come now.

"The investors' names will remain in the background before we go before the RFU to do their fit and proper persons' test."

One is reported to be Hartlebury-based local businessman Adam Hewitt, already a major club sponsor both of Warriors and neighbours Kidderminster Harriers. The other, Diamond revealed, "is a property developer specialising in waste management who I've known for 25 years".

"The first concern is to sort the creditors out," he said. "The administrators have a statutory duty to get in as much money as they can for the creditors as possible.

"DCMS [Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport] did a brilliant job helping rugby clubs survive during the Covid pandemic but DCMS and other creditors wouldn't want to see Worcester in the same boat in 12 to 18 months' time.

"I've had a couple of job offers. Do I want to take one of them? I may have to if we don't get this through."

The other interested consortium is still understood to be the one led by former Warriors chief executive Jim O'Toole, first outlined in August.

How the wheels have turned since Warriors' demise

Warriors who have found new homes

Diamond's vision of the future a month ago

Diamond already had one eye on Warriors' long-term future when he first publicly spoke about off-field affairs on 23 September prior to going into administration - and before the notion of him getting involved in a wider role, as he came to do at his previous club Sale.

"I don't think there's too many people wanting to buy sports businesses who've got endless buckets of money," he said in September, "But, if the right people come with the right vision, it can be a success.

"No business is being run properly if it spends more than it brings in. This place has been run poorly. Incredibly badly. I've said since I came here that it needs rebooting. At least I've had six months to work out how badly it's been run.

"With a fair wind behind us and some serious finances in reserve, not just to use on celebrity names on the playing staff, we need to reboot the club from the academy to the top.

"I've had the foresight to come in and see that, for whatever reasons, previous to me arriving, that there's been no financial control, no real graft in the business commercially, no savvy, the position it's ended up in.

"The local community have shown what they're about in bucket-loads. And we have to build relations with the local rugby club next door, where there's no relationship, which is ridiculous.

"Every rugby club has had to take emergency steps through the Covid period via the DCMS, allowing payment windows etc, but you've got to stay onside with these people. Generally that comes from good communication and, as we've seen, that's been very poor."

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