I had to tell Cov players there was no cash left

WHEN I went down to take training at Worcester on Tuesday after we’d beaten Bristol to reach the 5th Round of the 1997/98 Tetley’s Bitter Cup, there were people queuing for tickets around the block. We’d been drawn against Newcastle, who with the backing of Sir John Hall, had a load of megastars and were pumping everyone in the Premiership.

- PHIL MAYNARD

I couldn’t help but think back to my first match in charge of the club six years earlier and how I’d sat on a grassy bank watching us lose 9-6 to Bedworth on the second team pitch, because the first team one was waterlogged, in front of the proverbial four men and a dog thinking ‘there’s a lot to do here’.

David Hodgson was very influential in my early coaching career. He was chairman of playing of North Midlands, as well as chairman at Worcester, and he bowled into the clubhouse one day smoking a cigar and looking a million dollars, having become wealthy through his photocopying empire, saying ‘where’s this Phil Maynard I’ve been hearing a lot about?’ He asked me to do the U23s and we won a couple of Championships and that led to me getting the job at Sixways. It’s fair to say the place looked very different then!

Richard Dyde, a big lad, in the second row, said the players weren’t so sure about me in the first six months but were very sure after that. We won year after year and got to the National Leagues and a bloke called Don Everton said to David Hodgson, there’s a bloke who comes to some of the games who’d like to support us financially. He was Cecil Duckworth.

At the time we weren’t allowed to pay players but we’d caught the eye of a few people and that helped with recruitment. It all started at Peter Shillingford’s going away do – he was off to Bermuda – and a lot of good players were there as mates of his – Chris Raymond and Bruce Fenley (Gloucester) and Mark Linnett and Neil Lyman (Moseley). I looked at Dick Cummins, the first team manager, and said, ‘imagine if we could get all of these into one team’ and I set about doing it. We got most of them.