Worcester Warriors

Like, a place you never thought you'd go back to, but just catch up with a couple of the lads, like, because, like, that was honestly some of the best time.

Donaghy, you did Worcester as well.

Like, great memories.

You're right, we were in Killaloe on Sunday, man, and it was, it was magic.

A lot of rugby clubs at that time were suffering.

Worcester Warriors, I think London Irish.

And Wasps went bust.

And so the arena was suddenly in administration.

And I had a similar thing when my son was born.

I came back to work at Worcester Warriors and I'd been on mat leave and the team were going off on pre-season tour.

I was still breastfeeding, obviously a male rugby environment, simply not very enlightened at that stage.

I think things have moved on since.

What

about the Worcester one?

Well, that's why I wasn't going to mention any more.

I don't know how many big derbies.

Yeah,

he came in just... after so he came in the year my first year I started there he just left but you had the South African influence and you had the

squad he had the squad back then to rotate because you were breaking the salary cap and I'll say it again we weren't you were but it's also a fact of back in the day when you did that you had an international starter you had an international on the bench you had an international at third choice and it's a different environment now where you haven't got that depth in the positions it was easy to do it back then and I remember playing a game I think I was at Worcester and it was like you the Saris lads had been skiing and on the chop and you're like in the week before we play them we're like we'll show them and we beat you on a Friday night at our place and you weren't there then at the time I think you were at Gloucester but It's like, well, back then it didn't matter and they could do that because of the whole depth and quality in the squad.

If you think you can rotate at the minute, and they're talking about a seat at the table, you know, you get a seat at the table and you get to play.

But back then it was the A-League where you'd play 10.

You'd go home and away to, say, Newcastle, Worcester, Northampton, Leeds, Leicester, which was unbelievable.

I don't know why they ever got rid of it because for a young lad coming through 18, 19, 20, you'd go and play in front of 12,000 people at Welford Road in you know yeah I mean we'd have some first teamers who were coming back from injury or just on the fringes but Leicester whoever was on the bench for the first team the previous week they'd all be starting you come across some like really big names and you know probably humbling for them to come across lads like us who are youngsters but it's just about keeping fit but yeah so sorry what was your question John I've completely gone off

track it's basically like How did you find the opportunity? Did you see it as an opportunity? Oh, I'm sorry.

It was sort of dragging on a little bit and then there was going to be an offer and then there wasn't.

And then he was trying to get me to a couple of other places.

At the time, I think it was like maybe Leeds, Worcester, a couple of others.

There wasn't concrete offers, but he was like, what about this? What about that? And I wasn't too keen on moving away, to be honest.

And the other result was in rugby.

Worcester Warriors produced a remarkable second-half comeback to beat Hartbury 34-28 and preserve their unbeaten start to the championship season, despite playing more than 50 minutes with 14 men.

The victory at Hartbury sees Matt Vezic's side complete the opening block of fixtures with five wins from five and underline the resilience that's become a feature of their campaign.

And now a brief review of Worcestershire's cricket season.

The service will be video linked to St Paul's Church, Worcester.

Family flowers only, please.

Donations for Worcester Warriors Foundation or Prostate Cancer UK may be sent to F.W. Spilsbury, Funeral Director, 12 Upper Housel Road, Malvern, WR141TL.

To contact fire, police or ambulance in an emergency, 999 or 112.

You went to see Ed Slater.

Can you tell me a bit about that experience and about what Ed Slater is doing now at Worcester?

Yeah, sure.

So he gave an update a little while back and it was... flag to me that he's doing which was flagged to me and just it was mainly an update about his condition how he's getting on um four years over four years now since being diagnosed with mnd a lot of it was sort of how he's relying a lot of the time on ventilation to breathe he's sort of his eating arrangements that sort of thing what he's enjoying doing and but one of the pieces one of the sort of bullet points in there was that he's doing some video analysis work for worcester warriors and how much he was enjoying that, how much, so Matt Everard, who's the head coach there, how much he'd facilitated it.

Um, and that had been via Billy 12 trees and Fraser Balmain, especially who's, who are two of Ed's very good mates who he used to play with at both Leicester and at, um, Gloucester.

And, um, um, They are player coaches now at Worcester and Balmain is looking after the scrum.

So Ed was sort of speaking to those two and he came up with the idea of kind of wanting to just cast an eye over footage.

And Matt Everard was very sort of accommodating with that.