The winner of the Young Player of the Season Award, with over 80% of the vote, was Alex Grove, presented by Kim Briggs.

The winner of the Favourite Player Award was Chris Latham, presented by Pam Bourbage.

The winner of the Player of the Season Award was, for the second year running, a member of the Front Row Union, Matt Mullan, presented by Sheila Henn.

The main event then got underway, with the first of many questions from the floor directed at Tony Windo, asking how he had adapted to coaching. Tony said that he had found it very difficult to begin with, as he still felt like a player, but was not playing. MR had been a great help to him, however, and he was finding it much better in his second season. Matt Powell commented that he was enjoying his new role, although he had put on weight now that the only exercise he was getting was being a water carrier and he was on the same diet as Tony Windo! (They share an office.) The only real drawback with his role was that a lot of the analysis of other teams that we were due to play was done by videotape, rather than trips to, say, the South of France!

The subject of referees quickly appeared. Mike explained the process of feeding back on a referee’s performance to the assessor, who was present at the game. He tried not to speak to referees immediately after the game, to avoid any “heat of the moment” remarks. Instead, Alun and the other analysts would look at the game and put together a sequence of decisions which the club wanted to discuss or clarified. This would go off to the assessor, with a report. The club could also request a meeting with the assessor. The assessor would then go through the match with the official, discussing the reasons for their decisions, before feeding back to the club.

Without betraying any confidences from the evening I think it is fair to say that the club has found a need, justifiably, to make rather more extensive use of this procedure with certain officials than with others!

MR also explained that the coaching team now deal with officials, Hugh Watkins having left the club in the summer, not because he was no longer needed or wanted, but a victim of budget and the current economic climate.

MR was asked who he felt were good referees. He said that for him Nigel Owens and Chris White stood out because of their communication with players on the field: they talked to players in an attempt to keep the game moving and players, generally, responded.

Billy McGinty was asked if the club were looking at any rugby league players with a view to a cross-code switch. He said that whilst the club were always on the lookout for good players, making the transition was very difficult and there was no-one in the frame at the moment.

MR explained that as far as recruitment was concerned he would continue to look to promote guys from the Academy, although this was a long-term project: as an example he referred to Tom Wood, Miles Benjamin, and Matt Mullan, who had taken 2-3 years to fully establish themselves after leaving the Academy. The club had also established a scouting network this season to look at what who was out there in the Championship. The third piece of the jigsaw was “marquee players” like Chris Latham.

The two key things underpinning recruitment strategy were value for money, working within the budget for players, and promoting the “Worcester Way”, ensuring that new recruits bought into the culture at Worcester. A key part of this was giving more responsibility to players and ensuring that everyone was on the same page in terms of wanting to drive the club forward.

As an example of the culture change that MR had brought about Tony Windo said that in previous seasons he would have been happy to come away from Leicester the previous Saturday with a point: on the contrary, the team coach had been a very sombre place and the players disappointed to have come away with only a point, as they were now looking to get a result from every game.

The medical side was also discussed. Keir Hansen explained that the reason we see players laid on their back at the end of the game with their feet up on the advertising hoardings is to aid recovery and avoid tissue damage: other strategies included the fetching compression garments, ice baths, and set workloads for the week in terms of minutes per activity. MR explained that he was hoping to be able to use the squad to support that, by rotating players, and using bench players to make an impact.

The issue of last year’s chronic injury list was also raised. Brian Downey explained that the club kept detailed statistics on numbers, type, and duration of injuries, and looked at patterns. There had been a lot of freak injuries last year, such as Chris Latham’s shoulder injury. There had been some preventable injuries last year and there had been some minor changes to conditioning regimes to try to address this.

Keir explained, however, that in terms of things like hamstring and muscle injuries, the club had some of the best stats in the league. There had been some injuries resulting from collisions and the club had looked to address that in pre-season in how they trained the players to handle collisions, including getting Birmingham and Solihull down for a full-on training match. They also tried to keep pre-season varied and fresh, such as the triathlon, and getting the fire service in. In response to a question they would consider wheelchair rugby for next season.

The laws were also an interesting topic. MR said that he felt that the ELVs and the recent changes had not helped the game, although he admitted that they had made for exciting finishes and closer games. He felt that 3 years ago the game in the Premiership had been fantastic but the law changes had not improved things: in particular, the ELV changes to the maul last year had made it much harder to get the ball to the wings. Hopefully, that would improve this year with the reinstatement of the maul. The new tackle law was causing problems, however, with teams looking to reduce the number of times players were caught in possession in their own half, leading to some of the repetitive kicking we had seen.

In response to a question asking what changes members of the panel would like to see Billy McGinty very firmly believed that rolling substitutions would improve union and remove any temptation to “fake” injuries, in the same way that it had league.

The panel was asked to name the greatest player that they had played alongside or against:

Mike Ruddock – Tony Windo! Or David Richards, a fly-half for Swansea and Wales;
Matt Powell – Michael Lynagh;
Billy McGinty – Ellery Hanley, or Gene Wyles (Aus RL), and Tony Windo!
Brian Downey – Eric Elwood was the most professional pro he had met;
Tony Windo – Pat Sanderson, an inspiration who he admired massively;
Kier Hansen – Reuben Wiki, an outstanding professional and leader;
Alun Carter – Tony Windo! He had also seen some big strong leaders in his career and none better than Pat Sanderson. Alun was amazed that Pat had not had more recognition from England but, speaking as a Welshman, that was a good thing! David Bishop, scrum-half for Pooler, was the best he had played with.

Last, but not least, there was the 16th man! All the players in their acceptance speeches had referred to the fantastic support from the Warriors faithful and how they appreciated the noise from the stands. Chris in particular commented that the thing that stood out for him from the very first games he went to was the strength of the support and the numbers of fans who went to away games and made themselves heard. MR also said that the support of the fans was great, that the players were always commenting on it, and that the fans were always there for the players, staff, and club, and that this was really appreciated.

So there you go, our efforts are not only appreciated but positively encouraged, so be sure to make some noise next time you are at the game!

Many thanks to Ian Archer, the committee, and the club for a thoroughly entertaining evening. The raffle in support of the Academy Development Fund was also well supported on the night.

Make sure you book your place for the next event, An Evening with Ed Morrison, the RFU’s Elite Referee Manager, and Nicola Goodwin, on Wednesday 28 October 2008, 7.30 pm.

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon