Worcester Warriors rugby club is once again celebrating outstanding achievements - but this time off the pitch for its marketing and business feats.

The club has picked up two gongs at the annual Premier Rugby Marketing Awards, held in Twickenham.

It was presented with the Best Club Highly Commended title, and the Best Club Sponsor for its relationship with Worcester-based energy company, npower.

Jason Leonard, the most capped player in world rugby and premier rugby's ambassador, presented the sponsor award to Kathy Leather, Worcester Rugby's commercial manager, and Sue Pennington, marketing manager.

This was judged on the basis of overall commercial operation - including ticket sales, quality of hospitality and maintaining a professional relationship with Premier Rugby.

Kathy said: "Behind the scenes, a tremendous amount of hard work has gone into growing Worcester Rugby into a Premiership operation and I can speak for the whole team when I say we are delighted to receive this award as recognition of our efforts.

"It makes all our hard work seem all that more worthwhile to see that we are now up there with the other Premiership clubs in terms of our off the pitch performance.

"We have built a close working relationship with our club sponsors npower during our five-year partnership.

"In addition to being home and away shirt sponsors, the firm has supported the club on a number of levels.

"They have shared their in-house expertise to help us to develop our website and have also sponsored our community summer camps for our 'Warriors in the Making'.

"Npower regularly uses our facilities for meetings, seminars and business conferences and have added to our match-day atmosphere by introducing a cheerleading squad and supported the new Warriors mascot, Maximus," Ms Leather said.

Jenny Simons, spokesperson for npower, said: "We are committed to supporting things that are important to our employees and the local community.

"We are absolutely delighted that we have received recognition of our work with our neighbours Worcester Rugby.

"The Warriors have achieved great things on and off the pitch in recent years and we are proud to be associated with them."