CHAPTER 3

SIXWAYS: THE PROPERTY

The asset at the heart of the story

To Worcester supporters, Sixways was never simply a piece of land.

It was home.

It was where Worcester Warriors played Premiership rugby. It was where generations of supporters had stood on the terraces, where families gathered on match days and where the club had built its identity.

But legally and financially, Sixways was something rather different.

It was a substantial property asset.

And when the new ownership arrived in September 2018, the ownership of that asset began to change almost immediately.

That change would become one of the most important — and most controversial — parts of the entire Worcester Warriors story.

The evidence shows that the freehold of the stadium and surrounding land was transferred out of WRFC Trading on the very day the new owners completed their acquisition.

What happened next created a remarkably complicated structure involving:

MQ Property Co Limited

WRFC Trading Limited

Link Corporate Trustees

Alpha Real Capital

and two different long-term leasehold interests.

To understand what happened to Worcester Warriors, we have to understand what happened to Sixways.

WHAT WAS SIXWAYS WORTH?

Before the 2018 takeover, the value of Sixways was central to the sale of Worcester Warriors.

In November 2017, when the club was being marketed for sale, the reported overall valuation was approximately £26.7 million.

That figure was made up of:

£17 million for the 50-acre Sixways site

and

£9.7 million for the rugby club.

That was a reported market valuation, rather than the eventual transaction price.

It is an important distinction.

The £17 million figure was an assessment of the property.

The £9.7 million figure related to the rugby club.

Together they produced the widely reported £26.7 million valuation.

But by the time the new ownership completed its purchase in September 2018, the property was about to be treated very differently.

MQ PROPERTY

On 28 September 2018, the same day that Militibus Quanco acquired control of WRFC Trading, another company entered the story.

MQ Property Co Limited

Company number 11472994.

The company had actually been incorporated several months earlier, in July 2018.

Gerard McCrory was appointed a director on 19 July 2018.

Colin Goldring and Jason Whittingham subsequently became directors on 16 November 2018.

The name itself provides an obvious clue to its purpose.

MQ Property.

The company was created as a property-holding vehicle.

And on the day of the takeover, it acquired the freehold of Sixways.

The price recorded in the later accounts and reported in subsequent investigations was:

£6.25 MILLION

That is the first number we need to remember.

The property had been publicly valued at approximately £17 million in 2017.

The freehold was transferred for £6.25 million.

But there was an important difference.

The £6.25 million did not represent the simple purchase of Sixways in the ordinary sense.

Because almost immediately, another transaction took place.

THE 999-YEAR LEASE

On the same day that MQ Property acquired the freehold, a 999-year lease over the stadium and land was transferred to Link Corporate Trustees.

The company's later accounts described Link as a connected party, and the arrangement was associated with Alpha Real Capital.

A 999-year lease is obviously an extraordinarily long period.

For practical purposes, it can resemble ownership.

But legally it is not the same thing as owning the freehold.

And that distinction became crucial.

The freehold now sat with:

MQ Property

The 999-year leasehold interest sat with:

Link Corporate Trustees

And then another lease was created.

THE 175-YEAR LEASE

Link Corporate Trustees granted WRFC Trading a 175-year lease over the property.

So, within a very short period, the structure looked like this:

Sixways Freehold
|
MQ Property Ltd.
|
999 year Lease
|
175 year Lease
|
WRFC Trading
|
Worcester WAariors

This was not simply a transfer of the stadium.

It was a layered property structure.

And that distinction is fundamental.

WHY CREATE SUCH A STRUCTURE?

This is where we have to be disciplined.

The documentary evidence establishes what happened.

It does not automatically establish why every part of the structure was created.

Contemporary and later investigations described the arrangement as effectively a form of sale and leaseback, with MQ Property acquiring the freehold and WRFC Trading retaining long-term occupation through the lease structure.

The available documents also indicate that finance was raised against the property.

But we should not turn that into an accusation.

A sale-and-leaseback arrangement is not inherently improper.

Businesses use sale-and-leaseback structures for perfectly legitimate reasons, including raising capital while retaining the use of an asset.

The important questions for Worcester are therefore not simply:

“Why did they do it?”

but:

Who owned the asset afterwards?

Who received the money?

What obligations did WRFC Trading take on?

Who had security over the property?

And what happened to the structure later?

Those are questions the evidence can answer.

WHERE DID THE VALUE SIT?

The property structure produced another extraordinary accounting feature.

Although MQ Property held the freehold, the 175-year leasehold was recorded as an asset of WRFC Trading.

Later accounts valued that leasehold at approximately:

£16.5 MILLION

Meanwhile, the freehold held by MQ Property was recorded at nil in the relevant accounts because of the 999-year lease granted to Link Corporate Trustees.

This is an important distinction.

The physical stadium had not disappeared.

The land had not disappeared.

But the legal interests in the property had been divided between different entities.

The value was therefore spread across different legal interests.

That meant that saying simply:

“Worcester Warriors owned Sixways”

was no longer an adequate description of the legal position.

The rugby company had the long leasehold interest.

MQ Property held the freehold.

Another party held the 999-year lease.

And the financial obligations associated with those arrangements sat in particular companies.

THE £6.25 MILLION OBLIGATION

There was another important figure.

WRFC Trading's accounts recorded future lease payments associated with the arrangement.

The minimum future payments were reported at approximately:

£6.25 MILLION

Again, this needs careful interpretation.

It does not mean that WRFC Trading simply borrowed £6.25 million.

It reflects the obligations arising from the property arrangement.

That distinction matters because throughout this investigation we will repeatedly encounter figures which can look like loans but are actually:

lease liabilities

trade creditors

inter-company balances

secured borrowing

or other forms of obligation.

We will identify them separately wherever the evidence allows.

THE MONEY FLOW

The structure can therefore be simplified like this:

WRFC Trading
|
Freehold Transferred
|
MQ Property Ltd.
|
£6.25m Consideration
|
999 Year Lease
|
Link Corporate Trustees
|
175 year Lease
|
WRFC Trading

The important point is that WRFC Trading continued to operate from Sixways.

The rugby did not move.

The supporters did not move.

The stadium did not move.

But the legal ownership of the property had changed.

That would become enormously important later.

A PROPERTY ASSET BECOMES A
CORPORATE ASSET

This is perhaps the most important conceptual point in the chapter.

Sixways was no longer simply:

“the Warriors' ground.”

It had become a collection of legally distinct interests.

There was:

The freehold - Held by MQ Property.

The 999-year lease - Held by Link Corporate Trustees.

The 175-year lease - Held by WRFC Trading.

The rugby business - Operated by WRFC Trading.

And above the rugby company sat the wider ownership structure discussed in Chapter 2.

This separation meant that the fortunes of the rugby club and the fortunes of the property were no longer necessarily identical.

That distinction would become absolutely critical when the club eventually entered administration.

THE PEOPLE BEHIND MQ PROPERTY

At the beginning of the property structure, Gerard McCrory was a director of MQ Property.

His appointment was dated 19 July 2018, before the Warriors acquisition.

After the takeover, Colin Goldring and Jason Whittingham joined the board on 16 November 2018.

McCrory remained a director until 11 June 2019.

Goldring and Whittingham remained directors until 6 October 2022, when the administration process was already under way.

So the property company followed the same broad transition we saw in the ownership structure.

It began with McCrory.

Then Goldring and Whittingham became involved.

And eventually McCrory disappeared from the structure, leaving Goldring and Whittingham as the continuing directors.

THE COVID YEARS CHANGE THE EQUATION

The Sixways property structure did not remain frozen.

The COVID pandemic brought a completely new financial dimension.

The Government introduced emergency support for sports clubs, and Worcester eventually obtained a £15.3 million Sports Winter Survival Package loan.

But government finance came with security requirements.

Before the money could be advanced, existing charges over assets had to be addressed.

Sixways therefore became involved in another major financial restructuring.

In February 2021, WRFC Trading used part of the government-backed funding to acquire the 999-year leasehold interest back.

The amount reported for that transaction was approximately:

£4.83 MILLION

At the same time, approximately £4.4 million of the loan was used to release charges over Worcester's P Share.

The effect was that the long-term leasehold interests in Sixways were brought back together within the Warriors' operating structure.

Or at least, that was how it appeared.

THE PROPERTY COMES BACK TOGETHER

The transaction of February 2021 was significant.

WRFC Trading now held the 175-year lease.

It had also reacquired the 999-year lease.

The two interests could therefore potentially be combined into something much closer to outright control of the property.

The government had security over the company's assets.

And Sixways once again appeared to be sitting inside the rugby company's balance sheet.

But the story was not over.

Because the documents subsequently filed by MQ Property revealed another development.

FEBRUARY 2021
THE STRUCTURE CHANGED AGAIN

MQ Property's later accounts recorded that the sale-and-leaseback arrangement came to an end on 17 February 2021.

The accounts stated that the Sixways stadium and surrounding land were brought back under the ownership of MQ Property.

This is one of the most important moments in the entire property story.

The freehold had remained with MQ Property throughout the earlier arrangement.

The 999-year lease had been acquired by WRFC Trading in February 2021.

But the later documentation indicated that the property was ultimately brought back under 

MQ Property's ownership.

That created a difficult question.

If WRFC Trading was the company carrying the major debts, including the government-backed loan, what exactly was the position of the property?

That question would become central as the club approached collapse.

THE ARGUMENT OVER ASSET OWNERSHIP

By 2022, the issue had become impossible to ignore.

As Worcester's financial problems intensified, creditors and prospective buyers wanted to know exactly what they were dealing with.

The question was no longer simply:

“Can somebody buy Worcester Warriors?”

It was:

“What exactly are they buying?”

The BBC reported in September 2022 that former Worcester chief executive Jim O'Toole, who was involved with a potential takeover group, regarded the ownership of the land as crucial to any rescue.

He put it bluntly:

“The land has to be part of it.”

That statement captures the fundamental problem.

A rugby club needs somewhere to play.

But if the rugby company does not own the underlying property outright, the value and security of the club can be very different.

THE OWNERS' RESPONSE

By this stage, accusations of “asset stripping” had begun to appear.

It is essential that we record the response as well.

Goldring and Whittingham rejected the allegation.

In a statement reported by the BBC, they said that the stadium and land had been separate from the club for the whole period of their ownership and that the accusation of asset stripping was false. They said the arrangements were intended to make the group more stable.

That is their position.

It must not be converted into fact either way.

The allegation is not proof of wrongdoing.

The denial is not proof that every transaction was beyond scrutiny.

The correct position for this investigation is:

The property was moved through a series of corporate and leasehold arrangements.

Those arrangements are documented.

Questions were subsequently raised about them.

The owners denied wrongdoing.

The administrators were then required to examine the transactions.

That is where the evidence takes us.

THE CAR PARK

There was another Sixways property transaction in August 2022.

After HMRC had issued a winding-up petition, reporting emerged that MQ Property acquired the freehold of the Sixways car park for £50,000.

The timing made the transaction particularly controversial.

But again, we need to separate what is known from what is alleged.

We know the transaction occurred.

We know when it occurred.

We know the reported consideration.

We know MQ Property was associated with the Warriors' owners.

What we cannot conclude simply from those facts is that the transaction was unlawful or improper.

That is precisely why the administrator's subsequent investigation matters.

THE SIXWAYS STRUCTURE BY 2022

By the summer of 2022, the property structure had become extraordinarily complicated.

It was no longer enough to say:

“Worcester Warriors own Sixways.”

The corporate map looked more like this:

And surrounding that structure were:

Bond Group Sixways

Militibus Quanco / Worcester Sport

Link Corporate Trustees

Alpha Real Capital

government security

other lenders and charges

and numerous other companies.

The corporate structure had become far removed from the simple idea of a rugby club owning its own ground.

WHY SIXWAYS MATTERS SO MUCH

There is a temptation to see this as an arcane property story.

It isn't.

It goes directly to the heart of the eventual collapse.

If Worcester Warriors had simply owned Sixways outright, the club would have had a substantial property asset available to creditors, lenders or potential purchasers.

But where the property interests are divided between companies, leases and security arrangements, the situation becomes much more complicated.

Who owns the freehold?

Who owns the lease?

Who owes the money?

Who has security?

Who has the right to occupy the stadium?

Who receives commercial income?

And if the rugby company fails, what happens to the property?

Those questions would become critical in September 2022.

WHAT WE KNOW

At this stage, the documentary evidence establishes the following.

Sixways was part of the substantial property asset associated with Worcester Warriors before the 2018 takeover.

The site had been publicly valued at approximately £17 million in 2017, within an overall club-and-property valuation of £26.7 million.

MQ Property Co Limited was incorporated in July 2018.

Gerard McCrory became a director on 19 July 2018.

On 28 September 2018, MQ Property acquired the freehold of Sixways and surrounding land for £6.25 million.

A 999-year lease was then granted to Link Corporate Trustees.

A 175-year lease was granted back to WRFC Trading.

The 175-year lease was subsequently recorded as an asset of WRFC Trading at approximately £16.5 million.

WRFC Trading had future lease-payment obligations associated with the arrangement.

The structure was subsequently unwound in February 2021, with WRFC Trading acquiring the 999-year leasehold using part of the government-backed COVID loan.

Later accounts recorded the Sixways property as having been brought back under MQ Property's ownership.

MQ Property was still controlled by Goldring and Whittingham when the Warriors collapsed in 2022.

Questions about the ownership and movement of the Sixways assets became central to the administration.

WHAT WE DO NOT YET KNOW

We do not claim that the £6.25 million transaction represented the true market value of the freehold.

We do not claim that the difference between the earlier £17 million valuation and the £6.25 million transaction price represents a loss of £10.75 million.

Those figures relate to different valuations and different legal interests.

We do not claim that the sale-and-leaseback structure was unlawful.

We do not claim that the involvement of Alpha Real Capital or Link Corporate Trustees indicates wrongdoing.

We do not claim that the later transfer of the property back to MQ Property was an asset-stripping transaction.

Those are matters requiring evidence.

What we can say is that the structure was complicated, that significant property interests moved between companies, and that the arrangement became highly significant when WRFC Trading later became insolvent.

THE REAL VALUE OF SIXWAYS

There is one final point which needs to be understood before we leave this chapter.

The value of Sixways cannot be reduced to the value of a stadium.

The site represented:

the rugby ground

the surrounding land

car parks

commercial facilities

hospitality

development potential

and the physical home of Worcester Warriors.

That is why, in 2022, prospective buyers were interested in the land as much as the rugby club itself.

It was why the administrators had to examine the property structure.

And it was why the Sixways question would continue long after the rugby company entered administration.

The stadium was not merely where Worcester Warriors played.

It was one of the central assets around which the entire corporate story had been constructed.

THE PROPERTY JIGSAW

By the end of 2018, Sixways had ceased to be a simple asset belonging to the rugby operating company.

Instead:

MQ Property held the freehold.

Link Corporate Trustees held the 999-year lease.

WRFC Trading held the 175-year lease.

The rugby club continued operating from the site.

And the various interests were connected through financing and contractual arrangements.

Then COVID arrived.

Government money entered the picture.

The lease structure was altered.

The long lease was bought back.

The property was subsequently brought back under MQ Property.

And by 2022, creditors were asking exactly where the assets sat.

That is the property story.

But property does not exist in isolation.

It requires money.

And the next chapter takes us into perhaps the most important question of the entire investigation:

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

Where did the money come from?

How much was borrowed?

Who lent it?

Which companies received it?

What security was given?

And, most importantly:

where did the money go?

That is where the financial architecture of Worcester Warriors really begins to emerge