CONTRACT talks have begun at Worcester Warriors as director of rugby Dean Ryan looks to get players signed up before the end of the year.
Ryan admitted he did not have as many of his squad out of contract at the end of the campaign compared to last season.
But the Warriors boss revealed he had opened negotiations with those players and he said he hopes to make some announcements within the next few weeks.
“We haven’t got a huge amount of players out of contract this year like last season, so we are looking to talk to those that are and as always we are looking to enhance the squad,” Ryan said.
“We have always talked about travelling with the majority of this squad because that’s the opportunity we have sold to them. It is about coming here and growing.
“We don’t want to stay static, so if somebody doesn’t improve then we will look to enhance the squad.”
Warriors’ last-gasp 32-29 victory over Jersey on Friday moved them into first place before Bristol returned to the top of the Greene King IPA Championship with a 26-17 win over Rotherham Titans on Sunday.
Other than London Scottish, who are five points adrift of second place, Worcester and Bristol’s next closest rival is Rotherham who trail the top two by more than ten points.
But Ryan insisted he was not surprised by the gap as he said last season’s play-off semi-finalists Rotherham have struggled to retain their big name players in recent years.
“If a side doesn’t necessarily have the infrastructure to be a Premiership side it creates a reasonable group which Premiership clubs will look at it,” he said.
“We have done just that as we signed (Charlie) Mulchrone and (Ben) Sowrey. Newcastle have got one or two Rotherham lads as well and Northampton picked up two or three the year before, so that makes it really difficult and we don’t want to become a victim of that.
“We have got to get this group travelling and we want to answer everybody’s aspirations. If you can’t, people will look for those to be answered somewhere else and that is the challenge here.”