Ted Hill

Just two caps is scant reward for a former choir boy turned ‘New Zealand number six’ who’s been as consistently excellent as Ted Hill. Perhaps he played for the wrong club: Ted never thought so. He’d not been paid for four weeks when his agent persuaded to him face the reality of the situation. He eventually left, hoping that one day there’d be a club to return to...

Ted Hill has a turbulent eight months. Eddie Jones opted against adding to his two England caps, despite his excellent form in a struggling team – Steve Borthwick is still to make to contact at the time of writing – and there’s been the painfully slow, public demise of his beloved Worcester Warriors. But, context is everything, and a recent trip to Auschwitz has given him exactly that. “I only got back two days ago,” says Ted, who visited with his girlfriend Laura and his parents, Vince and Jan. “We were there just after the 78th anniversary [of the liberation of Auschwitz], so it’s not even been eighty years since it was all discovered. And you just think, ‘how on earth did all that happen?’”

As Ted learned on a six-hour tour of the largest Nazi death camp, Auschwitz saw an estimated 1.1 million people – the vast majority Jewish – gassed to death, worked to death or perish from illness, poor nutrition, and other forms of murder including being trialled as living cadavers for medical experimentation.

But as well as the history of Auschwitz, Ted was also struck by how Auschwitz is today. “Right next to the camp, there are rows and rows of houses, modern houses, and me and my dad were saying ‘what’s in people’s minds to want to live there now’,” he says. “You can understand if it’s within a few miles but right next to it? But I suppose people want to move on and live their lives
and you can definitely understand that.”

Trying to understand a point of view you don’t grasp yourself is one of Ted’s qualities – one he’s had to exercise a lot in the last year, especially with regards to Worcester, the club he joined aged fourteen, became captain of and then watched, helpless, as it was expelled from the Premiership in September last year and placed into administration with players and staff instantly losing their jobs. And while Ted shares the sadness of Worcester’s fans and staff at what happened, he doesn’t hold the club’s former owners – Colin Goldring and Jason Whittingham – in the same contempt that others do. Or at least he’s tried hard not to. 

“It’s very easy with these things to point the finger and say ‘the owners are this, the owners are that’,” he begins, “and I think there is a lot of room for that, so I have a lot of understanding for people pointing the finger. I think the owners did a lot of things wrong. But, also, you can’t account for Covid and how something like that ruined a lot of people’s businesses. 

“In terms of what they were doing that was underhand, I don’t know for sure. Everyone can speculate. What I was hearing was that they were asset-stripping and stuff, and they came out and said that’s just not true. Unless you are in the middle of it, you don’t truly know. What we did know, and what really ground people’s gears and upset people a lot, was that there was no communication from the owners. We had been getting paid late for probably three to four months prior to it happening [administration]. Every month it was a case of ‘sorry lads, bit of a cash flow issue, but money will be with you in a week.’

“The first time it happened we were a bit like, ‘that’s a bit annoying, but okay’. The second and third times, we were like ‘what’s going on here?’.” 

As financial frustrations for the players turned to fears for their professional futures, there was even less clarity from Worcester’s management in the direction of the players. “Stuff was happening day-by-day,” says Ted. “We would leave meetings having been given information saying, ‘this is where we are at’. Then we’d see in the media, ‘Breaking News – this has happened, and the club is no longer in the Premiership’, or whatever it was. So, it was all over the place.”

Up to this point Ted – the club’s captain throughout – was extending the benefit of the doubt to the owners. Yet even his tolerance began to wane when Goldring and Whittingham started taking sideswipes at the fans. “I had been trying to sit on the fence,’ he admits, “even almost on their side of things because I can understand how difficult Covid was. But then they were releasing statements like, ‘we’re sorry that you, the fans, didn’t turn up enough…’.

“Everyone was just a bit like, ‘you’re not making it easy on anyone by saying such backhanded things that no one appreciates’. It’s people’s club that they love and follow. At every game that I ever played in for Worcester, there were people who you would see after the match, and often be saying things to them like ‘sorry we didn’t win this time’ or ‘sorry we left it until the last minute to win that.’ And they would say ‘don’t worry, we’ve been supporters for twenty-odd years and it’s always been the same, we’ve always been struggling’.

“It’s their club, they love it and those are the people who don’t appreciate it – when they come week-in week-out through thick and thin for twenty odd years – to be told you should have come and supported us more….”

After weeks of late or no payments to staff and players, on 26 September  2022, Worcester were placed into administration and suspended from all competitions by the RFU. The business entity that managed Worcester Warriors – owned by Goldring and Whittingham – ultimately couldn’t pay off its debts, which totalled around £25 million. The new season was just two rounds old and Ted had to face a reality he’d not been prepared to accept would ever actually happen. 

“When we hadn’t been paid for three or four weeks, my agent said ‘you’ve got to start speaking to other people’ and I was like, ‘of course’, but in the back of my mind I still thought a deal would be done at Worcester. You wait until the last possible minute because why would you not. It’s your club. But I got to the point where I had to move on and start speaking to other clubs and be properly invested in where I was going to next, because it was happening.”

When the Rugby Journal visits Ted, it’s four months on from the sudden demise of his hometown club. He’s now employed by Bath Rugby and playing brilliantly, and regularly, in their back row. He’s also got the job security of a four-year contract.

Yet thoughts of what might have been at Worcester, are unshakable. “When I speak to a few of the guys who were at the club, we felt like we were going in a really good direction. It’s all speculation but that was the disappointing thing, because we felt like we were heading in a  good direction. We felt we’d made some really good signings. We had Duhan Van der Merwe, but we didn’t really have any other superstars, just really solid, intelligent team players. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.”

Despite what might have been, Ted is left with fond memories of the brotherhood he forged through some hard times on the pitch, punctured by the occasional high point that earned Worcester a reputation as a team you could never underestimate. Every Premiership team has been poleaxed at Sixways at some point, whilst some of Worcester’s finest days came away from home. 

Exeter in their pomp were beaten 5-6 at Sandy Park in 2018; Leicester were taken down at Welford Road the next season 37-44, when Ted made his Premiership debut and scored two tries from the bench, including the matchwinner. There were others. Stade Français were beaten in Paris by a Warriors team stacked with academy products, when Ted scored again. 

Yet no away result was quite as sweet as that achieved last season at the Brentford Community Stadium – the home of London Irish – when Worcester lifted top-flight silverware for the first time.

That silverware was the Premiership Rugby Cup, an often maligned competition when compared  with the lustre of its ancestors: the John Player Cup, the Pilkington Cup, the Tetley’s Bitter Cup – all versions of the same noble concept: a cup competition that any team in England could enter.

Diminished as it may be for the rugby purist – and open only to Premiership teams these days – it is still a big deal for the teams contesting the final and Irish and Worcester went hammer and tongs after that trophy for one hundred minutes of nerve-jangling action, which ended in a score draw 25-25, yet Worcester lifted the trophy having scored more tries on the night.

It was a match of high drama as Worcester scored in the last play of normal time to force extra time, only to see London Irish dominate the next twenty minutes, yet fail to score a point, as Paddy Jackson missed three penalty kicks in a row.

Worcester had won, having been, not just on the ropes but on the canvas. “That was a mental game,” recalls Ted. “How we managed to stay in it and the fortune of Paddy Jackson – who usually never misses from the tee – missing three or four kicks... we couldn’t believe it really and it’s got more significance behind it now with what happened to Worcester. But even without what’s happened since, it was a pretty crazy experience.”

The Premiership Rugby Cup might have been the high point of Ted’s
career at Worcester, but its starting point was at Malvern Rugby Club, where he first played the game. His dad, Vince, had captained Malvern for many years in a playing career that also encompassed London Irish and the Met Police. Ted says that although he loved playing rugby from the start, the same cannot be said about watching it. “I always enjoyed playing but I never really watched loads of rugby. I could never make it through eighty minutes, no way! I was constantly thinking to myself, ‘when’s this going to be finished?’!

“I also played football at a young age, and I sang in the choir, in that cathedral over there,” he says, pointing out the gothic spires of Worcester Cathedral that are visible from his garden, where our photoshoot is ramping up a gear with costume changes and all.

“On Sundays it was full on,” he continues. “Mum always said it was, ‘kit-to-kit-to-cassock’ as I went from rugby in the morning to football in the afternoon, to sing in the choir in the cathedral in the evening.”

Was he a good singer? “Pfffffff… you didn’t have to be that good! There weren’t any auditions to get in or anything, which was weird because you would have thought that to be in a choir you’d need to be really good. 

“I’m not bad,” Ted eventually concedes. “And I quite enjoyed it. I had a few friends who did it too.”

As rugby got more serious for Ted, he left the choir, handing his cassock back too. He has, however, still got his old hymn book somewhere, and remains very fond of the carols the choir sang at Christmas. “There’s definitely no way I can reel them all off but there was a carol that me and mum always liked,” says Ted. “It’s called ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’, do you know that one? My mum always liked it, that was her favourite. And I remember there were lots of others that I enjoyed.”

As you might have gathered by now, Ted’s interests outside of rugby are many. In short, he’s potentially interested in everything. On Ted’s kitchen table, he and his girlfriend are halfway through a thousand-piece puzzle of Marvel characters: Marvel being an interest he’s come to as an adult, through his girlfriend’s father, of all people. “I’m big into Marvel now, love it,” he admits. “Me and my girlfriend love the films and her dad does too. That’s his thing. He’s got some great knowledge. When we go and watch the films it’s usually him, Laura, me, sat in a row and she’ll be asking him questions and passing the answers back to me, so the knowledge gets passed down the line!

“I love Harry Potter too. They are going to be releasing a new Harry Potter game soon on Xbox and I’m going to be all over that. I haven’t even got it yet and I would already recommend it.”

It was Ted’s interest in history that took him to Auschwitz, and it’s an interest that has been passed on from his dad. “It was really nice to go with him and my mum to Poland because dad loves history. Rome’s really his big thing. He’s been there three times, he’s watched an unbelievable amount of documentaries and listened to endless podcasts.” If Ted does one day gets to play for England against Italy in Rome, it will be a red letter week for Vince Hill.

At the time of writing, Ted has two England caps. His debut came against Japan in 2018 when he was just nineteen, and a second cap came against the USA in 2021.

It’s a small return for someone who burst on the scene to such fanfare with Eddie Jones saying that Ted reminded him of a ‘New Zealand number six’ as he was ‘big, rangy and tough’. But England became a difficult nut to crack for Ted and he is one of many players who never knew quite where they stood. “With Eddie, almost from minute one, he was so hard to read. He’s famous for that and I’ve seen that story with Matt Giteau when it was his 21st birthday and Eddie says in training that he doesn’t want Matt to have a beer that evening, then later at the bar Eddie buys him a beer because it’s his birthday. I remember listening to that and thinking, ‘that is the perfect story to sum up Eddie’. It’s funny looking back but at the time, it’s stressful.”

And Ted has a similar story to tell about the misdirection of Eddie Jones. “The last time I was in the England camp, we were playing the Baa-Baas [in summer 2022],” he recalls. “A week before the match, Eddie said, ‘Ted we’re going to start you at 6 against the Baa-Baas that’s the plan, so have a good week’. I’d been around the camp long enough to know that that didn’t really mean much because he could easily change his mind. But still I was like, ‘that’s brilliant’. 

“Anyway, I had a good week, felt like I trained pretty well and blah blah blah. It got to the day before selection and we headed out for the last training session. 

“If Eddie pulls you aside in that session, you would assume you were on the bench [rather than starting]. So, he pulled me aside and I thought, ‘okay I must be on the bench, maybe I haven’t trained as well or whatever. It’s not a bad thing.’ And he was like, ‘mate we’re not going to play you. I can’t tell you why at this stage but we’re not going to play you.’

“And from being in the environment long enough. That happened all the time to people.”

Despite Eddie’s methods of man management, Ted holds England’s former coach in high regard. But he’s hopeful that Steve Borthwick will create a new environment which leaves players in no doubt as to where they stand. “It was an environment which constantly kept you on your toes which is what a high-performance environment should be, in a sense. But sometimes I think to myself ‘can it be done without all the extra stuff, without all the people feeling on edge about this and that?’ I think that’s what Steve Borthwick will bring. And I think people will bounce off that and be in… not a better environment but a different environment because there are not many coaches who can improve you like Eddie does. He will constantly be on you about things you can work on. When you chat to him he’s very professional and his knowledge of the game is second to none.”

Ted wasn’t included in Steve Borthwick’s initial training squad for the Six Nations, and he didn’t get in touch with Ted to let him know where he was in his thinking.  “Usually there is dialogue [from the England coaching staff]. But this time there wasn’t,” he says. “Obviously when the squad came out and I wasn’t in I was like ‘ah that’s frustrating’ and I didn’t get a phone call either so I was wondering how far off I am. But, I sat down in the days after and thought the back row is so competitive and they’ve got a lot on their plate, they can’t be phoning every single prospect in the back row.

“I look at the opposition you are going up against and think, ‘it’s relentless’,” he considers. “The bloke [Borthwick] must be under so much stress in terms of picking people. In terms of feedback it’s something I might ask for when the dust settles, through Johan [Van Graan, Bath’s head coach], I might be able to ask what I can get better at and go from there.

“I’m young,” he continues, ‘I’ve just started at Bath and that’s a huge new chapter in my career so I’m fine and I want to keep improving there, and it’s exciting in that sense.”

And what a start it’s been for Ted at The Rec. His debut appearance coincided with Bath’s first win of the season (after eight matches without a win). He was immediately handed a starting jersey and involved in back-to-back wins and he’s since become a mainstay of the pack, even scoring a wonder try against Toulon from 80 metres out, where he broke the line, then kicked ahead, regathered, and scored. Even in this day and age, it was the type of try you rarely see from a blindside flanker. “There’s definitely an aspect of being on the up at Bath,” says Ted. “Because there is a big history of winning at Bath, there’s almost a sense that it’s going to get back to where it was. That’s something we didn’t have at Worcester.

“You know at [Manchester] United, they can go on a terrible run of form but there’s still a sense that because it’s United they are always going to invest in good coaches, good players and get back to winning ways at some point. At Bath there’s a good enough team, good enough coaching programme and investment from the top to push us on and do well.

“Johan’s an excellent coach, and the coaches around him are really good,” explains Ted. “We’ve got a lot of boys coming back from injury and more to come which is exciting and we’ll have a hell of a team to pick from. We’ve got Finn Russell coming in next season which is a hefty signing which should be good. So, we’ve got high expectations of where we want to be. Why can’t we be challenging next season? And even this season, there’s no reason we can’t be challenging for a play-off spot. We just need to put in a string of good performances.

“I’m signed with Bath for three more seasons after this season so I’ve gone for some job security. And no matter what happens I will see that through because that’s how I like to do things. That’s how I see it.”

Ted’s last comment is said within the context of whether a return to Worcester could be on the table if the club were to make it back to the Premiership one day. Ted is very open towards that possibility, however, it would only be after his contract at Bath has expired.

A week after this interview, news breaks that Worcester Warriors’ new owners are looking to re-brand the club as Sixways Rugby and merge with fourth-tier side Stourbridge RFC in the process.

Ted sends us his thoughts over a WhatsApp message that makes it clear he feels that this latest development really is the end of Worcester Warriors, rather than the rescue package the club’s new ownership are trying to sell it as. 

Typically, Ted’s principal concern is for how Warriors fans must be feeling and for people owed money by the club, whose chances of retrieving any outstanding invoices or income seem to have disappeared with this move. “If everything that’s coming out is true,” dictates Ted into a voice note. “I don’t think it’s realistic for fans to think that it’s going to be the same, because it’s not going to be the same. It’s going to be very, very different. And, again, people have been left in limbo, especially rugby creditors, players, staff, sponsors, people who have worked with the club and are owed big sums of money and now that that’s not being paid to people, did they know that was going to happen and just didn’t let us know about it? Was this their plan all along or has it been a step-by-step thing? It’s tough to know.   

“So, will it be the same as what it was? No. Is it good that rugby is being played? Yes, I think it’s always good a form of rugby is being played. But I don’t think it’s ever going to be what Worcester Warriors was because it’s something completely different. If this is the final straw I think it’s very, very sad to see it come to this and I think a lot of players and staff are very, very sad but obviously fans as well who have been supporting the club for a long old time are very, very upset because it’s been a part of the surrounding area for such a long time.”

If Worcester Warriors really has gone, then Ted’s Worcester journey is over. However, some of the social media chatter around the intention to re-brand as Sixways Rugby has included cries that this deal is not done yet, and that other avenues to keep Worcester Warriors alive could still be pursued. Worcester fans, and rugby fans in general, can only keep their fingers crossed. Because while there’s a Worcester, there’ll always be a road back for Ted Hill. 

Story by Jack Zorab

Pictures by Oli Hillyer-Riley and Getty Images

This extract was taken from issue 21 of Rugby.
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