THE Step 5 club priced out of its 11,000-seater home of five years insists news of being replaced as tenants by their arch rivals came as “a complete shock”.
Hellenic League Worcester Raiders announced last month that the search for a new home had started an hour and a half after Worcester City confirmed a five-year deal to play from Sixways Stadium – home of defunct Premiership Rugby outfit Worcester Warriors – from next season.
Raiders went to Sixways in 2020 as part of what was meant to be a takeover by then-Warriors owners Colin Goldring and Jason Whittingham, who also owned League Two Morecambe.
Warriors fell into administration and have not played since September 2022 but Raiders remained a members club and continued to lease the facility on a year-by-year basis from the administrators.
That continued when Atlas, a firm seeking to re-establish professional rugby in Worcester, took charge but that fell through and it passed to current site owner Chris Holland who is hoping to resurrect Warriors.
In his programme notes for this week’s match against Roman Glass St George, Raiders chairman Steve Harris said the rent had doubled for this season and that it would quadruple if the club wanted to stay on next term.
“It is a bitter blow for us,” he told The NLP.
“The new ownership wants to make money from the stadium, we totally get that. If we stayed another year it would have quadrupled and it is unsustainable at this level and with the crowds we get.”
But despite the inevitability of the move, Harris said he had been kept in the dark over the prospect of another tenant coming in.
“We had no idea, it was a complete shock to us,” he said,
“We had a tip-off in the afternoon, via Worcester City as it happens. We checked with Sixways, they couldn’t tell me anything and the announcement came later that day.
“We had a meeting with Chris Holland several weeks ago and he said he didn’t think there would be room for a football team next season. After that we decided we might need to start looking elsewhere.
“I feel a little bit let down that Sixways didn’t tell us what was happening, it would have been nice to be able to tell our players and fans first but they are running this as a business and that’s where we are.”
Harris remains bullish about the future, revealing there are “a couple of options” on the table and that he hopes to make an announcement “in the next month”, adding that he is “100 per cent sure” of finding somewhere fit to maintain Step 5 status.
“When we arrived at Sixways we had one senior team, now we have several junior teams, our under-18s and two veterans’ teams and the club can carry on growing wherever we play,” he said.
“We have found homes for the junior section, we just have to cement where we play with the first team.”
An obvious option is Claines Lane, the Worcestershire FAowned facility that Worcester City is leaving at the end of the season having triggered a break clause in a 10-year lease.
Ironically, Raiders had been due to share with City there before taking the option of Sixways.
Junction 6, the company that runs Sixways Stadium, has been approached for comment.
