Worcester Warriors
Meet The Players 2012
By Lindsay Clayton
January 20 2012
Meet the players Jan 18th 2012
The Pitch View was the venue for the 2012 Warriors Meet the Players evening, where the Supporters club play host to the 1st team squad in a "speed dating" style event where the fans get to meet as many of the players as they can in a couple of hours.
This year’s event was opened by WRSC Chairman, Darren Birch, welcoming all as well as thanking the players for being there on, what was, their day off and then handing over to Richard Hill who had be taking a register of all the players to make those who were missing were those he knew about.
Richard thanked us for the turn out and then asked us very politely not to question the players about contracts as some negotiations were at a sensitive stage and it wasn't really fair to ask individuals about contracts as they wouldn't be able to answer, except for Jonny Arr, whose contract situation would be announced in the morning!. All other subjects were open to question. There were several players missing, 2 with childcare issues, Neil Best and Chris Fortey, Shaun Perry was at his usual Wednesday night college session (Hilly said he was learning to read and write to which some bright spark commented "well your his Dad!" which raised a chuckle or two), Matt Kvesic was with England U20s, Andy Short was in Penzance, Sione Tu'ipulotu was in Plymouth both on loan, Kai Horstmann had got stuck in traffic coming back from a business trip to London, Miles Benjamin was on his week off and finally Oliver Tomaszczyk was in Poland with his very ill Grandmother.
The players then went 2 by 2 to the tables and the main part of the evening began. Every 10 minutes or so Darren would ask fans to move on in a speed dating style event. Which seemed to go down well with the players and the fans alike.
I had a great chat with George Porter, asking him how far he had got down the M5 to Plymouth before having to turn back. He grinned and said he hadn’t actually set off before being told the loan deal was off due to The Hawk going to Poland. It turns out, as a Gloucester boy he had played against Jonny Arr when at school and knew Jake from those days too. I also chatted to Chris Jones, Adam Balding, Craig Gillies, Sam Betty, Blair Cowan, Jake Abbott and Chris Pennall. But it would seem I was a bit sparing in how many of the players I got to chat to, as the fan average seems to be about 15!
If you were at the event and have a tale or two to tell please post on this thread as there were 75 or so at the event of which I was only one!
One of the things that I was told was that, during the Stade game at home, The Hawk and Roncero had a bit of banter which started with Roncero saying, in very bad pigeon English, something quite derogatory to The Hawk to which Oliver replied, in immaculate Spanish (being a linguist) something equally derogatory ending with "and you English is rubbish too!" or words to that effect. Roncero obviously hadn't done his homework otherwise he would have known that The Hawk had played in Argentina as well as having a Oxford degree in languages!
Photographs courtesy of David Downward
Some after event tweets
@PabloD77 "Great night at #Sixways tonight almost full 1st squad at meet the players. Thanks to @TracyBirch @DarrenBirch68 and team for great night."
@MikeyBrooke "@wiiaholic top night - some of the guys were amazing Tevita was so funny!"
@wiiaholic "Just got home, great event at Sixways, most of the #warriors players were there, speed dating type format was good, we spoke to 15 players!"
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20/01/2012 14:43
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:01:29:21:33:03 by Powick Eastander.
