When Worcester Warriors Women abruptly withdrew from Premiership Women’s Rugby last October, Stef Evans made a promise to himself.
The Canadian front row had a modest contract with Sixways, but when she started looking for a new club she was no longer willing to play for free.
“I can’t risk blowing my life up all the time just to play rugby,” said Evans, who has played in the women’s top flight for five years. “I’m happy to play for net zero. But I promised myself I wouldn’t play for debt anymore.”
Worcester were a founding member of the Premier 15s (renamed PWR at the start of the season) and one of the first women’s clubs in the league to pay players, but their owners, Cube International, unexpectedly withdrew their financial support – and a ten-year business plan for the team – a few weeks into the 2023-2024 season.
When the Worcester-based company took over in early 2023, the optics looked positive. The company’s chairman, Andy Moss, even made the bold prediction that the women’s team could become commercially viable within the next five years. Ten months later, Moss made the ’emotionally challenging decision’ to withdraw the team from the restarted Premiership, days before the start of the competition.
Four months after the dark evening when the team suddenly came in from training and told the news: Telegraph Sports has brought together five former players who have all been affected by the club’s demise.
They are all eager to share their stories in the hope that this saga will never happen again and are demanding better investigation into the business models required to run top women’s teams.
Worcester were initially unsuccessful in their bid to enter English rugby’s premier women’s competition in December 2022 due to ongoing uncertainty surrounding the sale of the men’s club. They were readmitted three months after Moss took over and drew up his ambitious business plan.
“They’ve passed two financial checks, come in on a Monday night and decide they can’t pay us anymore,” said Siobhan McCarthy, who joined Worcester two seasons ago.
The highly rated Irish second row is on a three-month trial contract with Gloucester-Hartpury but has yet to earn any game time this season. “He [Moss] signed a 10-year deal with the PWR and they just said, ‘Yes, that’s it.’
Evans, nodding in agreement, intervenes. “So what is that process? [around owner checks] and is it changed?”
A Rugby Football Union spokesperson said: “Cube International provided the RFU with a business plan which demonstrated its ability to fund the Warriors Women’s team. Cube decided to withdraw the team from the competition due to changing business priorities, not financing issues. Now that the men’s team has gone into administration, Cube’s support has enabled the Warriors Women’s team to continue operating.”
Moss has been contacted by Telegraph Sport for comment. After the news broke last year, he told the BBC that the women’s team was “not financially viable” and “there simply isn’t support for it”.
More than half of Worcester’s squad from last season are yet to sign for new clubs, including a handful of England players under the age of 20.
Laura Keates, the 2014 World Cup winner with England and widely regarded as one of the best tightheads English women’s football has produced, is among those without a contract.
“We had 23 players who would play regularly in the Premier League,” says Keates, with palpable frustration in her voice. “Whether or not they get playing time is one of our collective biggest frustrations. The PWR and the Rugby Football Union are talking about the growth of women’s football, but actually you have lost about 40 players.”
Keates, 35, was recovering from a serious knee injury suffered during the 2022 Women’s World Cup in New Zealand when the club collapsed. The qualified dentist was able to access emergency funding through the Rugby Players’ Association, but working at a clinic in Malvern made it difficult to join a new club.
“It was incredibly tough,” says Keates. “I go back to Worcester a few days a week because that’s where our physio is run. It’s just kind of a shell of a place.”
Evans’ 90-minute drive to her new club, Leicester Tigers, is modest compared to some of her other former teammates. Winger Vicky Laflin makes a four-and-a-half hour round trip to Ealing Trailfinders after a “stressful time” looking for a new club on the eve of the new season.
The former England Under-20 player had been at Sixways for six years and found last-ditch talks with other clubs ‘stressful’. “You couldn’t really barter or negotiate,” says Laflin, who had spent all six years of her elite rugby life at Sixways. “It was like: take what is offered to you and be grateful, because all the clubs were full.”
The PWR excluded Worcester players from the £190,000 limit in a bid to encourage other clubs to accommodate them. However, many ended up with voluntary or, in McCarthy’s case, probationary contracts. Few are paid the same as in Worcester.
Keates, who still harbors ambitions to add to her 62 Red Roses caps, claims better regulation of how many England players can have within the salary cap could have helped.
“Your England internationals get paid quite well for England and then get top fees from their clubs,” says Keates. “Maybe you’re a Wales international or a Scotland international and an Irish international and I’ve heard that at some teams they don’t get paid anything. We talk about growing the game and everyone getting equal shares, but that’s a crazy way to have a competition.
“They want to grow English women’s rugby, you have a huge tiered system where some people get paid a lot and some people get paid less. How does that equalize the growth of the game?”
Non-English players, meanwhile, are feeling the pressure. Sara Moreira, the former Worcester back row who has been capped by Portugal, made the drastic decision to sign for Sale to preserve her rugby career. She now makes the five-hour journey from Worcester to the northern club three times a week.
“I am a self-employed tiler,” says Moreira. “Luckily I’m working with someone at the moment, but that means I can only work three or four days. The remaining days are half days, which just doesn’t make it feasible.
“I wanted to grow my business myself, but it’s hard to tell anyone. ‘I’ll come and tile your house, but I can only work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.’ I have had to make many changes, which has left me in a financially unstable position.”
As the PWR forges a path towards professionalism, Evans, Keates, Laflin, Moreira and McCarthy do not want to share their stories in vain. “That’s the saddest part of all this,” Evans says. “It feels like a lot of people who have spent years of their lives playing, working and building this league, their investment – my investment – has not been protected.” History, the group emphasizes, cannot repeat itself.