the final here at the stade de france puts an international spotlight on a sport that world rugby says has grown 11% this year alone. but it comes at a time where the future of the professional game in england is unclear. the premiership rugby club worcester warriors have been suspended from all competitions after failing to meet a deadline set by the rugby football union to provide a plan for their future funding. worcester have debts of £25 million, including at least six million in unpaid tax. matt kvesic goes over the line. referee: i've got to check. for me as a reporter understanding what's happened hasn't just been a professional journey. it's also been a personal one. my husband, matt kvecic, was one of the worcester warriors players who lost his job. it was tough, like, it was there's so much uncertainty at the time, which i think was, um, that's probably the toughest bit, but almost the worst bit was like there was also hope at the time as well. rugby is a physical game. you don't want to be going into it with ifs and buts because that's when you get injured. did we deep down really think it was going to come through? probably, probably not with everything that was going on and the meetings we were having behind closed doors in, you know, and with the premier rugby and the rfu, they wouldn't fill you with confidence, let's put it politely. the product on the pitch in the premiership is brilliant. that was the thing last year, it was absolutely brilliant, but what was happening off it was a mess. it's very strange seeing the place all quiet and a little bit run down, to be honest. it's quite sad, but we'll take away some really good memories. graham kitchener enjoyed a long career in professional rugby, starting and finishing at worcester warriors, but it didn't end as he'd hoped. set myself in the last season in terms of could i get to 200 prem games? could i play 300 sort of senior games, club games? and, you know, it kind of sounds silly, but all those were kind of sort of taken from me. bad news, eh? the dream's over. tv: shellshocked players exchanging farewells this morning, just minutes after learning they and hundreds of staff had lost theirjobs. i'm devastated. i'm absolutely devastated. so i went to wasps probably a couple of weeks after worcester sort of went into liquidation. i think i'd only done a couple of days sort of training with them. and there was a meeting called in the afternoon and, like, the administrator and the owner came in and had a sort of chat with the lads and, you know, that was kind of basically it. the wasps former owner chris wright says the club has got a very bleak future now after going into administration. it's over and it's the life and the passion and tradition for so many people that has gone, including myself. they always used to say, "once a wasp, always a wasp." yeah, i would say even that day it was a shock for me. everyone was always positive about the name. it's a massive club with a massive history and it wasn't something we wanted, but i probably did expect us to...to... maybe sort of a new owner to come in at some point. with two clubs folding, the english premiership had been rocked twice. come the season finale at twickenham, the league thought it could look to the future but there was another shock to come. the latest deadline for london irish to prove that they have a future has passed with the prospect of them becoming the third premiership club within a year to be thrown out of the division. the challenging part is that we weren't all together when we were told. ultimately, it's a human story, isn't it? it's sadness, and a lot of people were hurt very badly by not being able to know where they were going to be. and at the end of it all, it was, you know, a pretty harrowing time, really. i think one of the major impacts has been covid. clubs in the premiership um, rely heavily on ticket sales. so the fact that the stadiums were empty, that revenue wasn't coming in. you've then got the, as i say, the hospitality side, the merchandise. 0n the back of covid there hasn't been that influx of people back in the stadiums in the same way. and i think one of the major issues for rugby, which is very different to football, is that the business model is on its head. so the premiership isn't the lucrative entity, it is the rfu, whereas in football the fa is the underdog if we can term it like that. this is rooted way back when rugby went professional. it was the wild west back in �*95, �*96 when the game went pro, but there was no infrastructure, there was no planning, and rugby has led a pretty much hand—to—mouth existence right through the professional game. and, of course, the season just gone by we've seen the culmination of problems that have been brewing. it was not a surprise that a rugby club was in danger. it was a surprise how quickly and how devastating the fall of the clubs was. in 2019, premiership rugby was on a high. ten clubs made a profit, helped largely by a £200 million investment from the american firm cvc capital partners. but when the covid pandemic hit the very next season, the financial effect was catastrophic. the premiership thought it would protect itself by gradually expanding from 12 to 14 teams. but by 2022, every club that had filed its accounts reported a loss, and for three clubs, the debts became too much. the latest accounts for worcester warriors were filed for the season ending in 2020 and showed they made a loss ofjust over £4 million that season. for wasps, the situation was increasingly more serious. for the season ending in 2021, they made a loss of {7.4 million with debts of 28.6 million. and london irish's predicament was similar. at the end of the season 2021, they made a loss of 3.4 million with debts of 28.3 million. in rugby terms, the situation had become unsustainable. i'm colin and this is my business partnerjason, and we're the owners of the warriors. injune 2019, colin goldring and businessmanjason whittingham took on ownership of worcester warriors. when the club collapsed last year, it owed hundreds of suppliers, businesses, banks and ticket holders millions of pounds. administrators have been carrying out detailed investigations into the club's finances. a scathing parliamentary inquiry criticised the rfu for not intervening in golding's ownership of worcester after he'd been barred by a solicitors' disciplinary tribunal from being employed at any law firm without the regulator's permission over significant financial irregularities at the legal practice which had employed him. they went on to say the game is in disarray at the top, suffering from inert leadership and the demise of the clubs was a stain on the reputation of the rfu and premiership by. rug i think you've got to look at owners and directors explicitly — were they fit to be in office? so i think rugby can learn a great lesson here in terms of it needs to strengthen its owners' and directors' test absolutely. it needs to make sure there's ongoing monitoring. there needs to be more transparency over accounts, the fact that worcester filed accounts late. colin goldring and jason whittingham declined to take part in this programme. they told the bbc any allegations that they did not act in the club's best interests were in complete ignorance of the facts and truth. the overriding feeling of the players was we were we were kind of hung out to dry a little bit. could the rfu and premier rugby have done a little bit more to kind of, you know, help us and maybe get us through the season? the way they came across to us as players was that they, they weren't as concerned as we felt they could have been. so i came in injanuary 2022, and at that stage the league was operating under the model where there was very little central financial information about clubs. there was no obligation of clubs to report. and so really what we were learning around compliances was either what they were choosing to give us. i think i would say that fit and proper tests are a moment in time and i think they need to be more regular. it's notjust a business here. this is a community asset. so this involves not only the livelihoods of the people that work there, but also has a big impact on those communities. so we've put in place financial monitoring panels. players and fans of the clubs involved have told us they were hung out to dry by the prl and rfu. do you think the prl could have done more? no, i think the situation was so severe, principally because of the circumstances the clubs were in after the pandemic, um, that there was very little that could have been done. and so i think, you know, with hindsight, what could have been put into place to control things a bit more was around financial control and monitoring and stuff that we're doing now. but the reality was it was so severe what had happened to these clubs during the pandemic that even with those types of measures, their fate was pretty much sealed. you know, i think in hindsight, you know, clubs should have perhaps considered more around just totally mothballing things. but it wasn't just the men's rugby union team at worcester that was affected. the warriors remained in the women's premiership, although things have been a struggle. it was just a massive, massive roller—coaster. and i don't think at any point with the women, i thought, like i ever wanted to accept that it was done. you know, at the time when all this was happening, we had 1a players at the world cup, and i didn't want to be in a position where i'd have to ring them up and say, "you haven't got a club to come home to." after securing new financial backing, worcester warriors women had been determined not to follow their male counterparts. the women's game have got the opportunity to learn still. we're still relatively new, so we've got an opportunity to learn from the men. so we have to be really smart with how we grow and are sustainable. so there is no point in having this massive increase in player salaries if we haven't got the money coming in. just before this programme went to air worcester warriors women announced their external funding had ceased and they pulled out of this season's league and cup competitions. in worcester is sixways. it's a rugby ground, an asset where rugby can still be played. it's something wasps don't have with a history dating back more than 150 years and six times premiership champions wasps were also twice champions cup winners and parts of the european elite. the nomadic london club bought and moved to coventry�*s ricoh arena in 2014. it was a bold relocation, part, funded by selling investment bonds to supporters. it didn't pay off. there's you enjoying something tasty at the ricoh. it was almost like a bereavement. i wasn't expecting this. we'd been around wasps and supporting them in theirfamily for over 20 years, and then suddenly that was taken away. this was our weekend's activity as a family. the ricoh was seen by us as a good move. others didn't see it that way, particularly those that were wedded to london wasps, as it was, and had a proud heritage in that regard. for wasps, they had a big plan and it kind of looked as though it was going to work. and i would imagine the pandemic had a massive impact. their revenue streams just dried up. we were first introduced in an advisory capacity by the board who'd been looking to refinance because the fundamental problem they had, they had a huge debt pile. they had a debt pile of more than 100 million in the group, and they had the retail bondholders who were in for 36 million. they were trying to get a refinance. and despite all their best efforts, it didn't come to fruition. so in the end, they just ran out of cash. i think the move to the ricoh did contribute to, i would say, the demise of wasps. but i think it goes back earlier. when wasps were at adams park they did try to seek secondary rugby income by building a new stadium there. so there was a lot of investment and time put into that adventure, which unfortunately failed at the last hurdle. so i think there's always a balance with rugby clubs between being a rugby business and then also the non—rugby income, which is important. what do you think were the main reasons for the collapse? oh, i don't know. the bond was obviously a massive issue in terms of terms of wasps. the club took a massive gamble, didn't they, and coming up to the midlands from london. everything with covid definitely did not help the situation at all. and is it funny, after a couple of years, people get loans and everything to get themselves through covid, that a couple of years later there's three clubs go within one year. so i think that's got a lot to do with it. i think we did really well as a sport actually in the time when you think about it. we're seeing the problem of trying to force a club to exist, force a name, force a location, force a fan base. rugby's organic, rugby grows and rugby knows where it belongs. it knows where the club lives and where it exists. you try and force it, you've got to work bloody hard to make it work. london irish had a proud history in south—west london, but like wasps, they became nomadic first sharing reading's madejski stadium before moving in with brentford football club in 2020. london irish club needs a home, you've got to have a home. they thought brentford would be the answer and it wasn't the answer. big fees, big salaries were spent to keep them competitive. they couldn't generate their home there, so they went searching for it and it didn't work. 0wner mick crossan had been bailing out london irish for a decade. when his attempts to sell the club to a us consortium failed, the club folded. i don't know if we will all move on completely. it's a weird feeling to know that you look back in the following season, your team doesn't exist any more. that's a really hard thing to put into place. during the covid pandemic, the uk government gave emergency loans to england's premiership clubs to keep them afloat. it loaded millions of pounds of debts onto the clubs, debts they have to pay back. do you think that was the right thing to do? because was it notjust delaying the inevitable? no, because they would have thought, "well, these are clubs that are in a competitive league, they've got tv rights, they've got money from cvc. rugby is a popular sport. the six nations generates huge interest." so clubs are stressed without a doubt, but they needed that money. they had to have it, or the game would have collapsed. i don't think we would have a premiership if those loans hadn't been put in place. it's an incredible pressure because they're not insignificant amounts and i think the clubs didn't have any choice at the time. without them, as i say, all clubs would have gone bust, but i think they quite quickly became a burden because then there is the further burden of having to repay those loans which are taxpayers' money. we are looking to manage those things and so, you know, i see a positive outcome with all that. i think there was a stat, something like 90% of wasps fans aren't watching rugby any more. from a sport that we need to create, we need to get more and more supporters in, we've potentially lost people. rugby needs to realise it's not as big as it thinks it is. it's going for global domination, but i think it's overreached itself. but at the moment, it's this mess no—one knows. seasons are uncontrolled. you pay your ticket, you don't see your star players. it's a mess. it needs to be tightened up. i mean, that's one of the things we are tidying up. so we want our international players to be available much more for clubs, and clearly they're not if you've got a calendar that's overlapping. so that's one of the benefits of having a ten—team league. and so you can now say to fans that when you when you come and watch, the england stars will be there. we also need to balance that with having regional representation across the country. and so, you know, what exists in the premiership is a tempting premiership. but this is why we want to align ourselves much more with the championship. we need to bridge that gap, we need to make it smaller. but i firmly believe we need a nationalfootprint of elite clubs. there's a whole stabilisation plan which, you know, really is a sort of four to five—year period where we're trying to get funding certainty. some of that is our partnership with the rfu and how the professional game is managed and how we become much closer and deal with things much more as a sort of one entity approach rather than as two sort of sides of a coin. funds have been lost to the game and the league can't afford that. what do you make of that? i think the sort of message to wasps and worcester fans is please stay loyal to your club and let us work on a system where we can get them back to topflight as soon as possible. i really want them to be part of the championship as soon as possible because they're such great brands and they're so important to the fabric of rugby in this country. and i think that's now part of the mission, is to is to try and resuscitate those brands and make them what they were again. in 1999, both richmond and london scottish boomed briefly and then went bust. clubs, including london welsh, have had to start again. none has made it back to top flight. so should premiership clubs be treated differently? yeah, i think that's a really important point. that's what needs to balance. it's the aspiration of clubs and it's also that the system that exists, rightly or wrongly, around promotion, relegation and what happens when clubs go into insolvency. so that is a very difficult debate to have. i think the huge success that women's sport is having across all sports, but particularly the lionesses, isjust going to see non—international rugby union club rugby union, go further down, i think, and i'm not so sure that those revenues will be there from television companies. i sort of feel that the spend is more likely to be towards women's sport. of course, there's other interest in other competing interests and so that's where we need to focus with growth. and really, we're trying to focus on the younger demographic and also families much more. as a rugby fan, an avid rugby fan, i'd like to see more collaboration between the premiership and the rfu, but it's got to be meaningful and transparent. if we're not careful i think as a sport you're going to see more players moving off to france. the consequences of england's professional clubs struggling has a ripple effect beyond borders. here in france, the salary cap, which is the amount professional clubs can pay players, is greater than that of the premiership. it means many of the premiership star players are moving abroad. henry arundell, jack willis and david ribbans are all england world cup players who've already moved to the top 1a in france with more set to follow. there were bigger markets there. so the gap between football and...and rugby is smaller and more equal than it is clearly here. so it's a bigger market and probably more dominant. the rfu announced they'd be looking to create hybrid contracts for around 25 players in a move to stem the flow of those leaving. players generally have a short playing career, so they need to make as much money as they possibly can and also develop prospects for career transition. if you look at the scenes - in france, it's pretty special. there's a lot of people over| here jealous of what they're doing with the game over there. just off the french coast, though, liesjersey, a rising club. last season's championship winners and with big ambitions. that was until this season. faced with uncertainty over central funding, a potential investor pulled out and the club ceased trading. a fourth club to go bust in 12 months. i had no prior knowledge whatsoever, and that is a real kick in the teeth. the abruptness and lack of warning has meant that 70 people with families and children are now left in the dark, unemployed, potentially having to leave the island pretty quickly. and for children in school and things like that, and jobs and livelihoods and rents and mortgages, it's...it�*s unbelievable that's been allowed to happen as abruptly. jersey reds said their accounts have been consistently and openly shared with the government ofjersey, but the state's assembly voted against using public funds to help the professional sports team when its assets were extremely unclear. in a statement, the rugby football union said they had launched a hardship fund for players and staff in need of financial support. they added: what do you expect from the next season? will all of these clubs survive and get through? what do you expect from the next season? will all of these clubs survive and get through? i don't know. i hope so. i really hope so. i do not want to see any other clubs go to the wall. and i want this now to be the catalyst for a more collaborative league, leagues. i'd like to see it extend further down than just the premier league premiership. and rugby has to put in place strict financial structures to make sure this doesn't happen again. i guess the ideal is you want...you want settled teams with the ability to bring those young english players through, with also giving clubs the ability to sign one or two really good, maybe perhaps overseas players or, you know, quality internationals who are going to...going to help those young players. that's the...that's the ideal. it's a special club. there's a big history about them. within the last couple of decades, they've won premiership title, they've won european, it doesn't get any bigger at club level than that. it's interesting when people say to me, "so who are you going to support now?" and i go, "i don't really want to support anybody. "i'm still with...with wasps." so, you know, i think a lot of supporters like me, who are desperate to see them back and being successful again, and i think it will happen. london irish still exists - as an amateur club and there's a thriving amateur game there. and a...and a lot of kids turn up every saturday, i sunday up at hazelwood to play there, to do- what they love as kids. so that still lives. and when something like that still lives, . maybe there's hope. they were a good team and now it's just annoying that we can't watch them. i'm going to probably support harlequins because my... i know someone that plays for harlequins in the girls team. i'll probably - support harlequins. yeah. why quins? because, like, i heard that also they also play good. i i do live quite close to harlequins, so my dad said i should support harlequins, but i don't want to. you know, it's called grassroots for a reason. clubs are like plants. they need healthy roots to survive. club owners may come and go, club fortunes may rise and fall, but keep the roots healthy, and you'll keep the club alive. keep the roots healthy and you'll guarantee the future of the sport. all: come on, london irish men, whoo! - hello. for some places, the flooding situation could get worse before it gets better — not least in eastern scotland, where we have this new red warning from the met office. further rain through the day on saturday, falling on top of what we've already had. this is friday's rainfall radar. the rain was pretty relentless across eastern scotland and also northern england, parts of east anglia, the north midlands, north wales. huge amounts of rain. we've seen widespread flooding and this met office amber warning remains in force through the first parts of saturday morning. but of greatest concern, i think, is this red warning covering parts of angus and southern aberdeenshire — a further 100mm of rain, further significant flooding and a danger to life. amber warnings covering larger parts of eastern and northern scotland as this rain just keeps on coming through the day tomorrow. for england and wales, broadly speaking, a drier day. this band of showery rain will push eastwards. could see hefty downpours skirting the southeast corner. northern ireland probably having some of the best of the weather — largely dry, just the odd shower, some spells of sunshine. windy in the south of england and the channel islands. still windy in north—east scotland. but for many northern parts of the uk, not as windy as it has been. temperatures north to south 8—16 degrees. now, this heavy rain continues into saturday evening but it will clear northwards overnight, this band of showery rain pushing away from eastern england and then, things do turn drier. yes, a few showers, i think there'll be some mist patches around as well, but a drier start to sunday morning as an area of low pressure tends to swirl away north—eastwards. and this very, very weak ridge of high pressure — you can't see much of it here on the weather chart but there is some slightly higher pressure just toppling through, and that means drierweather, more in the way of sunshine. yes, there will be some showers but certainly not as wet as it has been. lighter winds, temperatures of 12—16 degrees, so a much calmer day to end the weekend. but then, as we head into next week, well, another area of low pressure looks set to push up from the south. this one probably not as potent but it will still bring further rain in places where we really do not need it. so, the outlook for next week is pretty unsettled. there will be some heavy rain around at times. it will be quite windy but with some drier interludes. live from washington, this is bbc news. two us hostages held by hamas have been released. but hundreds more remain captive. the wait for aid drags on in gaza, as the humanitarian situation gets worse. officials say hospitals are near collapse. and — we'll look at tensions in the wider region. as concerns grow — the conflict could widen. and we look at what the us commitment to israel means for washington's ongoing support for ukraine. hello. i'm sumi somaskanda. hamas has released its first two hostages since carrying out a surprise attack on israel two weeks ago. both american, this is the moment whenjudith tai and her daughter natalie shoshana raanan were handed over to the red cross. these are pictures released by hamas. the red cross said they were extremely relieved after they helped facilitate the transfer of the us hostages from gaza to israel. we understand that mother and daughter are now reunited with theirfamilies in israel. the mother and daughter were kidnapped during the surprise attack by hamas on october seventh from the nahal oz kibbutz. they are from illinois but were in israel visiting family. hamas said the pair was freed for humanitarian reasons. the father of natalie says he spoke with mr biden, with his daughter and judith. he shared his joy and relief following the release and said