FRUSTRATION will be the overwhelming emotion felt by Geoff Cooke when he bids farewell to Worcester Rugby Club in June.

The Silver Fox will not be extending his three-year stay after watching the dream of promotion again hit the rocks this season.

Cooke has been mulling over the option of staying for another year but with Premiership rugby again out of reach for at least another 12 months, he has decided to return to his native Yorkshire.

He will leave, though, with the niggling irritation that Worcester are still out of the top 12.

"It's hugely disappointing to leave with the club still outside of the Premiership," he said.

"This is the first job I've taken where I haven't achieved my primary objective. It's frustrating really and you look back and think if I'd been totally in charge would we have done any better?

"I don't know is the short answer but at least I would have felt it was my responsibility and I would have been more accountable. At the moment I feel a bit half and half in what's happened."

After arriving in July 1999, the former England manager was handed a brief to help Les Cusworth get on with the coaching side and provide support. However, with Cusworth's departure he took on a more hands-on coaching role which continued the season after alongside Adrian Skeggs.

This year, Cooke has remained outside of team affairs as he took on the challenge of chief executive. However, without promotion at the end of the season, the role has become one which offers few challenges.

"I need a change now," added Cooke. "I originally had a two-year contract which was extended for another year. We, however, are not going to make the Premiership again so I've decided to leave at the end of May.

"I've been living a split existence here and in Yorkshire and it is expensive running two homes. People think I'm the former England manager but they forget I wasn't paid during my time!

"I'm also away from my wife and friends and there just aren't enough challenges here for me any more now I'm not involved in the rugby.

"The business side is doing really well but we cannot take it much further without getting into the Premiership. If we were in the Premiership, I'd want to stay - I'd love to stay. I would talk about a new contract for the next two or three years but it just isn't going to happen this season."

His departure, however, will not be the end for Cooke. The spark which made him the most successful England coach lives on and the 60-year-old is planning to stay in the sport in some capacity.

"I've got to do some work! Again, I really haven't made much money out of the game so I will have to carry on. It's only the last few years that I've been paid for what I do so I have to work.

"I'm going to look at everything. Media work, consultancy work and there may be some part-time rugby work - just to keep myself involved.

"I've got three months to sort the rest of my life out!"

Cooke's departure will come as no shock to chairman Cecil Duckworth who expected him to quit if top-level rugby again escaped through the club's grasp.

"Cecil didn't anticipate that I would be staying. There will be budget changes next year, people will be looking to save costs and, to be frank, I'm a cost they can save!

"We are still talking at the moment at me possibly staying involved one day a week on a consultancy basis so it may not be the end of my involvement."

Whatever happens, though, there will be lingering regrets inside Cooke when he leaves his full-time Sixways role.

"The regret is that I wasn't here when they got in the Premiership. I'm comfortable that we had a good enough squad assembled last season to have won the league.

"We allowed Leeds to get stronger and we didn't get stronger and that was our own fault. This season I'm absolutely sure we had a good enough squad to win it.

"I feel we have a better squad, in depth, than Rotherham but you have to give them credit because they've performed consistently much better than we have. It's the bonus points that have killed us.

"Alright you can say there are a few players that we've signed who haven't come off but that's always going to happen - you never get that 100 per cent right.

"I'll be very sad to leave this as a mission unfulfilled. I shall keep watching though and I'm sure Worcester will get there, one way or another.

"I only hope that when they do I'm not so old that I don't bloody care anymore!"