Many people on this board have expressed their understanding and support for the talented young players who have chosen to move on from Worcester to the bigger clubs just when they have reached a level where they can really make a difference at Sixways and take their club to the highest leavels.
I am not one who holds those players totally without some level of culpability for the raw deal that Worcester has received. The least they owe us is a candid and very detailed explanation of why they left the club that had brought them on board when bigger clubs wouldn't. Worcester gave them an opportunity to play in the Premiership and develop their skills much more rapidly that they would have done at Harlequins or Saracens or Leicester where their apprenticeship would have included many years of bench-warming behind their big name players. Most importantly they should let us know if they are aware, individually and collectively, of the real harm they have done to their parent club and the club that gave them their chance. That point is especially pertinent when that parent club has manfully striven to provide top-rate facilities and become a real competitor in the best league in the country only to get stamped on every time they make a little progress. Each time a Wood, a Kitchener, a Mullan or a Kvesic leaves to join bigger clubs Worcester has to find two players of equal capability in order to retain their status quo and to match the strength of their bigger commpetitors who are now even bigger than Worcester with the addition of these Worcester stars while Worcester is even smaller from their loss.

Rugby is small potatoes when it comes to professional sports. A dozen clubs strewn around the smaller towns of England, playing in front of paltry crowds with insignificant TV ratings. It consists of a handful of clubs scrambling and succeeding in their aim to hog the talent and the money with none of them even slightly interested in the business itself, none of them interested in growing the market, making it more competitive and a spectacle worth anyone spending their time watching. Observing the few bully boys stomping on the minnows year after year is only of interest to the fans of the two teams involved in their own fixtures and not to a general audience. Sky and the other broadcasters keep the smaller teams off their schedules for the most part because they have no talent and can't compete. Pro rugby is shrinking from being small potatoes to becoming half a bag of chips without salt. It desperately needs some leadership with the ability and power and vision to address these important issues before the rugby chip bag is thrown into the waste bin. Worcester's young players need to wake up they they should be part and parcel of the team that Cecil has built and is trying to make a successful enterprise. We're told they aren't leaving for money except the ill-gotten under-the-table kind if those stories are to be believed. I don't think it can really be claimed that they wouldn't get honours and trophies if they had all stayed at Worcester either. A Worcester team with those departed academy graduate stars would be in the thick of any competition.

Well said Mr P. Whilst I will always understand any player's desire to succeed, there should still be room for some form of loyalty. There are, indeed, a handful of clubs who patently refuse to bring on any significant players of their own, prefering to snaffle any decent talent from supposedly 'smaller' clubs like ours. This sort of behaviour, of course, exists in most sports to a greater, or lesser, degree.

I'm not saying that players should not be allowed to move on, but there ought to be some control to help clubs to build for the future, without constantly being helpless victims of the predatory big boys.

Everything you say is true Mr P, but you can't blame a player for securing his future, whether this be more money, increased possibilty of winning caps or whatever. Even if the wild rumour of Kev not getting on with RH is true, that's a perfectly valid reason for moving on. Incidentally, we shouldn't count our loss of chickens just yet; Kvesic said on the radio that he won't decide before early February.

Of course, patgadd, Kev hasn't made his mind up, yet, he says. Although, in my experience, the longer someone takes in a situation like this, the greater the chance that they will move on. anyway. The club will have had long enough to put its case to any player who's contract is due to expire. If any player isn't convinced by now, the probability is that he can't be.

Obviously, I hope I am wrong and Kev, in particular decides to stay. If he plays a big part in this season's 6N, that may prove to him that being at Sixways is not going to inhibit his international aspirations. That just leaves the small problem of convincing him that Warriors are going places.

These players owe Worcester nothing. Absolutely nothing.

This is a job to these guys, Warriors are their employer, the club is a business. When i move jobs, do i feel like i owe the company something? No.

Wpuld i feel like i need to justify my move by explaining the details of contracts etc to 10,000 customers. No.

Should these guys stay loyal even if they can get a better deal elsewhere? No.

Good luck to those that have left us. Thank you for efforts. We as a club will move on, like we always have done.

While I admire the argument I completely disagree the players owe us nothing, we can get rid of players if we want and players can leave if they want. They have contracts when they are over they are free to do what they like, while its annoying they don't all stay the idea that they owe us something for giving them a contract in the first place is rubbish.

I feel like I'm always bringing up references to football but you have to look at how other sports do things. If a footballer only has a year left on his contract then he either signs an extension or gets sold (yes, sold, for real money) to stop him just leaving for free. Rocket science it ain't.

By the way, any player who says he hasn't decided yet is waiting for his agent to secure the highest bidder. I'm guessing the auction continues.

How refreshing to see a genuine and gentlemanly (no offence; some of you may be ladies)difference of opinion. In my view Blindside6 has hit the nail on the head, but none of us feels the need to say Yah Boo Sucks to those who differ.

Fiver as much as I loathe wendyball, this does indeed make perfect sense. In Kvesic's case, the pill would have been a little easier to swallow if it had been sugar coated by Gloucester (or whoever) having to pay the club a nice little fee for him which we could have put toward another equally good (if older) signing.

Blindside and dave32, you miss the point, really, with your posts. In ordinary 'civvy' life, I suppose most employees feel they don't owe their employers anything (apart from giving them a job, paid holidays/sick, training them in a trade or profession) as they give plenty back, by working hard and loyally doing their best. Notice, I alluded to loyalty. That is what is missing these days. And loyalty is a two-way street, of course.

My argument is not about all situations. If Goodey was to leave this summer, for instance, it's not the same as a young academy player going IMO. Goodey has successfully plied his trade at a number of clubs, which is why we approached him, as a fully-fledged professional rugby player. We paid him, he brought his skills. Deal done. Kvesic, and his generation, whilst also being paid, are having what naive skills they possess improved, and learning new ones through the club's coaching scheme. There is, rarely, any immediate benefit, as with any 'apprentice'.

The loyalty they may, or may not, owe is not for the club 'giving them a contract in the first place', but for the time and effort (yes, and money) put into shaping their skills. Surely, anyone investing in that way could reasonably expect some return when their efforts bear fruit. And yes, if the only way that can be realised is to get a transfer fee, then that's how it should be. I am only arguing this for a club's 'home-grown' players. A system which brings some return would encourage most clubs to invest in youth.

Don't blame the players for seeking the best deal, blame the club for being naive in not wrapping them up in watertight contracts. By the way, I feel it necessary to mention due to the nonsense spoken on other topics, we cannot blame Mr Hill. I'm sure he'd put most players on long contracts if the board would agree.

Other posts mentioned agents and players refusing to sign long contracts. I'd show them the door as any player who will only sign a one year extension is not playing for the club, rather keeping an eye open for potential suitors.

Loyalty is either earned or bought. Sadly, in this world it is quite often the latter.

You're spot on, Fiver. It would be great if players could be tied down for longer, and I would love to see it in just about every case. The only reason I can think of the board backing off on this is, if a player seriously injures himself in the early days of a long contract, what would the compo be? IMO, though, if any club is serious about challenging for honours, risks have to be taken.

I think you'll find clubs have insurance against long term injuries. I just think they need bigger balls when negotiating. The club should have the power, not the players.

The club will obviously insure players against serious injury but, if they have to pay up a player's contract (or a percentage), then the insurance will be more the longer there is left to run on the deal.

The best deal is not what this is about. It is repeatedly said that money is not the issue and that some of the departed players concerned left Worcester for less money than Worcester offered. The weightiest factor that keeps them leaving is the sheer fact that none of them have ever stayed the course. If they had stayed the club would not be the poor cousin that it is so tempting for them to leave for greener pastures of their own making.

As for professional football, God spare us from falling into that pit of corruption. Football is acknowledged to be "all about the money" with not just three or four disenfranchised clubs but four leagues full of them, all of them desperate to stay afloat financially. Great clubs have fallen into financial ruin brought about by the way money has made competition for the highest honours available to a only a tiny number consisting of maybe 4% of professional football clubs and scarcely 20% of the Premiership clubs on a repeating basis and only an injection of mega millions from a wealthy benefactor can help any of the others even dream of a successful future.
The NFL has shown that it is possible to design and implement on a nationwide basis, a fully competitive and extremely profitable business model based on a popular national sport. If football or rugby could adopt a similar business objective, with guidelines to match the challenge they face in their respective sports, there could be a light at the end of the present very dark tunnel. The present cut-throat personality of these two sports in England is headed in exactly the wrong direction.