RICHARD Hill has given star lock Graham Kitchener permission to talk to other clubs, with Leicester Tigers at the front of the queue for the sought-after England Saxon.

The Warriors head coach is adamant he wants to keep his hottest prospect and plans to hold talks with the 21-year-old when he is back at Six-ways from international duty.

Leicester are in the market for a new lock after Richard Blaze — a player they lured from Sixways much to War-riors consternation in 2007 — was forced to quit the game through injury and are be-lieved to have firmed up their interest in Kitchener.

Former England scrum-half Hill said: “The ball is firmly in our court and we don’t want Kitch to go. Sometimes a club will release a player and you’ll think ‘why have they released him?’ but we are not releasing Kitch at all.

“If he goes, that’s his decision. As far as I know, no deal has been done with Leicester — I don’t know if he has spoken to Leicester or not yet.

“I have talked to his agent and I have given permission for him to talk to other people because he needs to get his head sorted sooner rather than later.

“I’d rather he does it now than wait until March when we’re in the play-offs.”

The Worcester chief added: “Hopefully, Phil (Davies), Cecil (Duckworth) and I will have chance to sit down with him after these Saxons games and put the Worcester case forward. That will be a rugby case — he’s been thr-ough the system here at Wor-cester and has played for the Saxons on the back of that.

“I hope he has seen a change in the culture and the playing style here — he’s got his hands on the ball more and enjoys our style of play.

“If we get promoted, he’d be going into the Premiership as a front-line player, but if he goes to another club, he’ll have to work his way in and not necessarily be front-line.

“I just hope he’s seen enough of this club to see it change the way he wanted it to change. Matt Mullan and Chris Pennell wanted it to alter too. Hopefully, they have all seen the evidence of that and will see their futures at Worcester.

“Big clubs can be a draw and, for a young lad, there are tough decisions to make. We just have to put our case as strongly as we can.

“We want Worcester to be a big club in a very short space of time and we don’t want to lose players of the quality of Kitch, because that won’t do us any good.

“Tom Wood’s gone already and if we want to become a big club in the next two or three years, then these sort of players need to be sticking with us.”