England heroes inspire Warriors

Mike Ruddock has revealed his team have used England and their heroic run to the World Cup final as inspiration as they head to Leicester Tigers on Saturday (kick-off 3pm).

The Director of Rugby admits his side has endured a difficult start to the Guinness Premiership season with no win in the opening five games.

By comparison, England were also slow to start in the World Cup in France and were written off by many pundits before thrilling victories over Australia and France handed them a final spot against South Africa.

Now Ruddock wants his troops learn the same lessons use the ‘hurt’ of recent weeks to regroup to fire their top-flight campaign with victory at Welford Road.

“We want a big performance on Saturday, we want to use that hurt from recent weeks to fuel a big display and we have used England as inspiration this week,” he said.

“They played badly at the start of the World Cup and you could argue just before going back to the summer tour to South Africa when things weren’t going their way.

“However, they have regrouped, stuck together and worked hard to and turn their game around – that is what we have got to do.

“Brian Ashton has said all along that he didn’t think they would be far away and I guess that has happened, it’s just about getting one win for your confidence and you can be a very different team.”

Ruddock is ready to make changes in his starting line-up for the daunting trip to Tigers and has already indicated Loki Crichton will start his first game.

But he warned that no matter what team is selected they could not hide behind the misfortune that has riddled the side in recent games.

“We are conscious that lady luck is not shining on us but you make your own luck. There are some bizarre tries being scored against us but we have to press on and hope that before too long some of that comes our way,” he said.

“If you look at our defensive statistics from the game against Leeds we had over 95 per cent completion rate in defence, nobody made a line break against us.

“A loose pass or intercept try is hurting us, nobody else is breaching our defence and that gives us a lot of heart.

“We can press on and stop teams scoring against us, we would be more concerned if teams were making line breaks all the time and breaking us down and cutting us apart.

“We have to iron out a few silly errors in our game and learn to play for 80 minutes. If we can put that together then I’m very positive this team will go from strength to strength, it’s just making that breakthrough.”


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