Aviva Premiership
Uncertain future for Worcester coaches
ESPN Staff
April 22, 2013
Worcester and Exeter contest a lineout, Exeter Chiefs v Worcester Warriors, Aviva Premiership, Sandy Park, Exeter, November 3, 2012
Worcester players and staff will have to live close to Sixways in the future © Getty Images
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The future of Worcester Warriors' coaches seems ambiguous following their rugby committee's wish that all players and backroom staff need to live within 40 minutes of their ground Sixways.

Former Gloucester coach Dean Ryan will take over as director of rugby at the end of the season, replacing the outgoing Richard Hill, and he could well bring in his own coaching staff. But at present, coaches Phil Larder, Mathieu Rourre and team manager Alun Carter all live outside of a 40-minute radius.

Sean Holley was linked with the head coach role at Worcester, but he looks set to join Bristol under Andy Robinson and so if Ryan does wish to bring in his own backroom staff then it looks likely they will have to conform to the committee's plan.

"I want people at this club who live within 40 minutes of Sixways - it is a fact we would not have employed someone who lived in Ireland and would have came here for five days a week," Bill Bolsover, chairman of the club's rugby committee, told Worcester News. "If you're going to be in this club, you have to be here. The day rugby operations director Corin Palmer started with us, he rented a house in Worcester.

"I believe that if you're going to be in a business, you live with that business. You go to the pub in the evening and you take the plaudits, or you take the bollockings and you understand what is happening in your marketplace."

Hill's departure from the Warriors was announced last week. He had already started building for next season with the signings of Agustin Creevy and Paul Warwick, among others, but it will be Ryan who works with the new recruits. "Richard did exactly what was asked of him," Bolsover said of Hill's departure. "His job was to take us from the Championship into the Premiership and then move us on from there.

"He held us in the right position, but we didn't believe - and Richard himself didn't believe - he was going to move us any further forward, so now is the time to make the change. We made the change now because we wanted to give the new person as long as we can to do what he needs to sort out the club for the future, as that will be his role as director of rugby."

And in related news, Worcester have announced Charlie Little will leave his role as their managing director at the end of the month. "We are extremely grateful for his support over the past seven years and for someone with so much of his career ahead of him, we wish him well for the future," Anthony Glossop, Worcester's chairman of the board, said.

"We have undertaken a thorough and wide-ranging search to find a new CEO. This is well advanced and a further announcement will be made shortly."

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