If ambition alone could win trophies and titles, the builders currently finishing off Worcester's new stand would be best advised to start on an extension to the club's trophy cabinet. The stand that seats 6,000, half the ground's new capacity, and lines the entire east side of the pitch with hospitality boxes, is costing the club's owner and benefactor, Cecil Duckworth, about £9m.

It is a head-turner and should make more senior Premiership clubs look to their laurels but this week Mike Ruddock, Worcester's director of rugby, was more happy talking about his own long-term investments and particularly the arrival of Chris Latham, arguably the best full-back in world rugby for the past six years. "He's a two- to three-year investment," said Ruddock, who freely admits he bought the Australian's considerable rugby brain as well as his 32-year-old legs.

He has already added Latham to the group of senior players who drive the club's playing policy and has him mentoring their younger talent, including the wing Miles Benjamin, the hot new thing in English rugby last season, and particularly Chris Pennell, an up-and-coming full-back.

Latham's arrival at Sixways was kick-started during last year's World Cup. A phone call was enough to sell Ruddock's vision, which was some going since Latham was signing up for a club that could not buy a win at the time and struggled until late season with the former Wales coach's move away from forward-dominated rugby.

Five wins in the last eight games was enough to stay up and by then Latham had agreed a two-year contract with an option of a further year. But why would a player who had represented his country 78 times, been to three World Cups - winning in 1999 - want to leave a decade of sunshine playing in Brisbane for one of England's rugby outposts in the damp, chilly West Midlands? "It's the vision of a team that wants to get into the top tier and the top position," he said this week. "Obviously every team says it, but there is a difference between a team that just says it and a team that really wants it. Mike sold the story of a team that really wants it."

Not that Latham, who makes his Worcester debut at Northampton on Sunday, had any idea of what he was letting himself in for. He admits he knew nothing of the Guinness Premiership and had not seen a game or even viewed a video. "I only study what I'm really involved in [at the time]. I come with no preconception, which is good I think. The way that Mike sold the story of the ambition of the club ... that for me is exciting. If the club is ambitious and the team is ambitious, then everything else you can work with."

Worcester have bought big in the past with the All Blacks Rico Gear, Sam Tuitupou and Greg Rawlinson the most recent arrivals, but Latham believes he will also benefit from working with the likes of Benjam in - "A great kid, his work ethic is very good" - and Pennell. "I've been around, and you pass on information that you learn - which is good for rugby generally, but it also puts the pressure on me to keep improving and keep on top of my game."

It also helps that his family already feels at home living by the banks of the Severn and that he will be playing in a stadium - and in front of a passionate crowd - that, he thinks, will remind him of Queensland's base at Ballymore. "It has a Ballymore feel about it. It's what rugby is all about. It's a great community here."

Latham, his wife and their two children arrived three weeks ago when the Australian board agreed to end his contract early. Had they been less considerate, Latham could have been playing for the Wallabies in the Tri-Nations series decider against the All Blacks on Saturday week at Brisbane's 53,000-seater Suncorp Stadium.

His final season with Queensland was affected by a ruptured pectoral muscle one game away from what would have been his 100th Super Rugby appearance for the Reds. But successful surgery and an unusually rapid recovery made playing for a resurgent Australia under their new coach, Robbie Deans, a possibility.

"To tell you the truth I haven't been thinking of Australia and the All Blacks," said Latham, his country's second highest try scorer behind David Campese. "I needed something new to do, to stay fresh. The focus is playing well against Northampton. That's what I need to do.

"Nervous? Yes I'll be nervous, but I always am. Someone told me that if you're nervous it means you care and that made a lot of sense to me. I know there are a lot of expectations from the general public. It comes with the job, it comes with the territory but I have my own expectations as well and they are very high."