Hello everybody and welcome to the Flats and Shanks podcast, a bonus issue if you will,

a bonus episode if you will. Tom and I joined today by Mark Evans, who's been around professional,

well amateur and professional rugby union for about 250 years since he was 53, knows his onions,

been all over the world involved in professional rugby and I found myself sending Shanks,

WhatsApp, didn't I, Shanks about the Worcester thing, the Wasp thing, financial viability,

hood by rugby club type messages and then I thought what I might do is give Mark Evans a

couple and then I thought well why not give Mark Evans a call and record it and make it into a

podcast because as I always, whether I'm right or wrong I always find your views interesting

on these things, I take it you do have a view Mark. And usually yes I do yeah yeah I can't believe it,

I just I think what we might do Mark, I mean you will have read around this a lot like we have

and instead of concentrating perhaps on the specifics of what we think is happening at Wasp

and Worcester, we might go a bit more generic and talk about yes those two clubs in part,

but also sort of the how did we get here and the potential fixes, potential it is,

you know I said to you before you, before we called you, as I said to Shanks, who'd by rugby club,

I wouldn't make and it just in a passing comment and I thought I mean I wouldn't, I wouldn't know

how it is viable but you will have views on this I guess before we go general we'll just kind of

an overview of what's happening, we know that Worcester we've been told that Worcester have been

given a winding up order by HMRC which I read is not terminal but it's worrying nonetheless and

wasps are you know they've once you know relatively vehemently denied the fact that they are

in real financial trouble but we know that they did the whole there's the whole stadium business

there's a there's a there's a huge thing that hasn't quite there's a lot of investment from fans

in this bond that they've struggled to repay there's this whole arena business that doesn't seem to

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