• Steve Diamond is a rival bidder for Worcester Warriors.
• Warriors would have participated in the Championship this September.
• The Rugby Football Union rejected the new owners’ request.

Steve Diamond, a rival bidder for Worcester Warriors, claims that if his offer had been accepted, the team would have participated in the Championship this September while continuing to use its current name.

In response to the news that Warriors’ new owners Atlas want to rename the team, Diamond talked with media on Friday morning.

Additionally, Atlas disclosed their intention to join with fourth-tier club Stourbridge.

“They appear to be grasping at straws,” Diamond told media.

“There’s an ancient adage that says that in desperate times, desperate people do desperate things.

“How would I have reacted? In September, I’d be playing in the Championship.”

When the relegated former Premiership club’s request to be permitted to begin next season in the Championship was rejected by the Rugby Football Union on 16 December, it has been claimed that the new owners Jim O’Toole and James Sandford, from the Atlas Group, did not actually pass a “fit and proper persons test.”

Administrators Begbies Traynor had already selected them as preferred bidders in October after the early-season financial collapse of the Warriors under former owners Colin Goldring and Jason Whittingham.

Diamond, however, asserts that his consortium—joined with Warriors club sponsor Adam Hewitt—had RFU clearance in fact.

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