Q&A
Ben Jaycock speaks to Worcester Warriors Supporters Trust founder Marcus Mulcahy about the group’s plans to revitalise the club
Following a torrid 12 months of dismal ownership that resulted in their administration and expulsion from the Premiership, Marcus Mulcahy fears the club is in danger of disappearing for ever under the current plans of owners Atlas and says they’ll do all they can to ensure the Worcester Warriors name lives on.
Ben Jaycock: Tell us all about the Worcester Warriors Supporters Trust, how you were formed and the work that you’ve done to date.
Marcus Mulcahy: It’s very much still a work in progress, it all started six-eight weeks ago. I put some feelers out to people on social media about the club not really having much of a voice in what was happening to the club and I think a lot of people felt very frustrated about that. Initially I was appealing to the supporters club to be a bit more vocal but it turned out we didn’t really have a supporters club as the committee had been dissolved. Somebody reached out to me who had worked in football administration and talked about the benefits of a supporters trust over a supporters club in being more of a legitimate body. We recruited a working group around us and set out some aims.
With the supporters involved in the running of the club, will that provide much needed welcome clarity after a year of constant lies from careless owners?
In the short-term we need to wait and see what happens with the ownership. Atlas have said they’ve completed it but they haven’t had a financial completion yet. If Atlas do manage to get the funds and properly complete then we’ll have to be in dialogue going forward. But it could all go back to the administrators and start again, in which case we’re in a strong position to liaise with other bidders. We already have spoken to people who were interested in buying the club in the first place. Atlas have contacted us and we have had some email contact with them but we haven’t had a formal meeting yet. I think Atlas will be more problematic for us because they have no intentions of having a men’s Worcester Warriors team playing at Sixways, which is our primary goal.
How important is returning to your home crowd of Sixways?
I think it is important. We want to be playing at Sixways, it’s so deeply linked with the club that if we’re starting a new Worcester Warriors team somewhere else in Worcester, I don’t think people would come back as they’d only return to Sixways.
The women’s team, University of Worcester Warriors also play a bit part, tell us about the work you’d like to do with them in order for them to return to elite level.
I’ve introduced myself to the team manager and the director of rugby Jo Yapp. They are under separate ownership but are also financially struggling shown by them setting up a Just Giving page to reach £50,000 to get them through until the end of the season. They are uncertain as to whether they’ll be able to stay at Sixways. Their supporter base is very much the men’s supporter base as I don’t think there’s many people who just support the ladies and this season they’ve been successful, so they’ve had decent attendances at Sixways so we want to support them.
The legacy of Cecil Duckworth has no doubt been tarnished, tell us about Cecil and what he meant to Worcester Warriors.
Not just to Worcester Warriors but the whole of Worcester, he is an icon, a massive philanthropist. He set up multiple charities and is incredibly well respected. It’s been desperately sad for people to have seen what’s happened over the past few years. There were plans to create the Duckworth Plaza when the new stand was built but that has yet to come to pass and we would dearly help see that through. He’s a man mountain that everyone looks up to and we want to make sure his legacy continues.
Do you see any kind of future with the current plans with Atlas, it all seems very vague and not looking good?
They don’t seem to have any plans to be honest. They had a meeting at Stourbridge but we don’t know anymore about that. No one’s fed back about what their negotiations are like with Stourbridge. Certainly the trust would be very much against taking over Stourbridge’s first team as it’s a ridiculous idea, it’s a non starter as far as I’m concerned. The other big part of their plans were Wasps being tenants and it seems that’s been completely blown out of the water if Wasps are to start again from scratch. They’ve always appeared to be making it up as they go along and reacting to things and changing their plans. There’s been so little feedback to the supporters which is really why we set up the trust. They’ve not registered with the RFU and at the moment there’s no Worcester Warriors men’s team and it seems Atlas have zero interest in creating one.
Do you fear you’ll go the same way as Wasps and start from the bottom of the pyramid?
It very much depends on who ends up becoming the owners in the longer term. We don’t know the setup of what the leagues will look like. There would be a very good case to answer why Worcester Warriors should go down to the bottom of the leagues from a safety perspective as if you’ve got ambitions as a club to return to an elite level you’re going to attract players that are a much higher standard than level 10 and will also be taking crowds of 300-500 as they’ll be local leagues. I suspect there’s a deal to be made about what level Worcester can come back into.
Steve Diamond was close to forming his own consortium and taking over, do you think he would have been a good fit?
He was undoubtedly the fans’ favoured option as he said he would have Worcester playing in the Championship next season. We’ve had some contact with him and Adam Hewitt his business partner. We believe they are still potentially interested if things don’t go to plan with Atlas.
How long have you been a Worcester Warriors supporter?
I played club rugby up until my 30s and thought what am I going to do now, so I started watching club rugby and it happened to coincide with a move from Birmingham down to Worcester. I went to Worcester before they got promoted first time round in 2003 and also worked at the club for two and a half seasons on the medical team. It’s not lifelong but over 20 years, so all of this has made me desperately unhappy. I feel very close to the club. It’s a community, family feel club and we want to turn it back into that.
How desperate are you for this nightmare to end and the talking to be done on the pitch again rather than enduring catastrophes off it?
People to a degree have fallen out of love with rugby. I’m a passionate rugby supporter but can’t bring myself to be able to watch many games on TV because it hurts too much to see players like Ollie Lawrence, Ted Hill, Fin Smith and Seb Atkinson lauding it up on the pitch for another club. So many people have done well this season and you just think what could have been really. It’s left a bad taste but we have to look to the future and help the club back on the straight and narrow.
