WORCESTER Warriors must prove they are a genuine Premiership force in order to hang onto their brightest stars, insists Sixways head coach Richard Hill.

With former Warrior Tom Wood making his international debut in tonight’s England’s Six Nations clash with Wales, everyone associated with Worcester will be thinking what might have been.

The ambitious openside clearly felt he could not achieve his lofty goals with Warriors and joined the likes of Richard Blaze and Dylan Hartley in quitting Sixways for the bright lights of high-flying Premiership sides.

There is also intense speculation that Worcester’s England Saxons lock Graham Kitchener will become the next academy-produced prospect to jump ship, with Leicester waiting in the wings.

However, Warriors chief Hill admits there is little that can be done to prevent this cherry-picking trend other than for Worcester to force their way onto the top table and themselves become one of the big boys.

He said: “The only way you can combat your best young players being picked off is to get into the Premiership and prove to them that you are a genuine Premiership team.

“Worcester has the best training facilities out of all of the clubs in the Premiership — we’ve just got to get the product on the field to be top-notch as well then people will want to come — it’s as simple as that.”

Hill added: “You can understand young lads looking at other clubs, though. What young lad wouldn’t want to go to Leicester if they had the opportunity? Our job at Worcester is to make this an attractive club to come to and there are many good points.

“We’ve just got to build the squad up to be a good, powerful squad that can perform really well in the Premiership as soon as possible, so people will want to come to Worcester.

“Tom Wood did something like seven years at Worcester, then he’s done six months at Northampton and got an England cap, so Saints take the credit for it.

“But all of his hard work —apart from the last little bit — has been at Worcester, so that is a bit tough on us.

“It’s nice in a way that decent players are coming through, but we’ve got to be able to retain them.

“You can’t be in the Championship or scraping around the bottom of the Premiership — Leeds will struggle to keep their best players — players will want to go to teams where they feel a bit more stable.”

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