Worcester Warriors A produced a brave second half comeback before falling to a narrow 34-27 defeat in the final Guinness A League Northern Conference fixture of the season at Northampton on Monday night (April 2).
Warriors trailed 27-3 at the interval after Wanderers took advantage of a disappointing start from the visitors at Franklin’s Gardens.
Worcester, led by skipper Tom Wood, showed plenty of character to run in four second half tries from Charlie Fellows, Callum Black, Jamie Lennard and Haloti Molatika to close in on the hosts and a memorable fightback.
But Warriors came up just short in a nine-try thriller and Andrew Stanley, Warriors Academy manager, admitted his side had paid the price for a poor start to the game.
“There was a bit of wind but we just started the game too slowly,” he said. “We have started most of our games this season with plenty of purpose but on this occasion we were poor and paid the penalty. We needed to start in the right vein and take some control.
“It is disappointing because we started to show what we could do in the second half and even had the opportunity to even scrape a draw.
“We showed the kind of rugby we can produce in the second period and a number of players stood up, but we had a massive gap to climb and it just proved too much.
“We tried to win the second half and managed to pick up a bonus point for four tries and another for coming within seven points, we showed character but need to make sure we learn from our mistakes and do not repeat that start.”
Timeline
4m Burke t Bourret c 7-0
10m Lennard p 7-3
23m Bourret p 10-3
30m Harries t 15-3
35m Myring t Bourret c 22-3
39m Beech t 27-3
48m Fellows t 27-8
56m Barnard t Bourret c 34-8
60m Black t Lennard c 34-15
70m Lennard t Lennard c 34-22
78m Molatika t 34-27
Team: 01 Callum Black, 02 Matt Mullan (Deacon 75), 03 Jack Gilding (Page 33), 04 Tim Collier (MacDonald 38), 05 Will Bowley (Molatika 68), 06 Craig Everett, 07 Dave Hughes, 08 Tom Wood (c), 09 Jonny Arr, 10 Joe Carlisle, 11 Charlie Fellows, 12 Bryan Rennie (Runciman 78), 13 Simon Whatling (Grove 66), 14 Marcel Garvey (Oduoza 40), 15 Jamie Lennard
Replacements: 16 Matt Deacon, 17 Jordan Page, 18 Sam MacDonald, 19 Haloti Molatika, 20 Will Runciman, 21 Alex Grove, 22 Uche Oduoza