Ruddock looks at bigger picture in defeat

Warriors boss Mike Ruddock insisted his young guns would learn from the experience and become stronger after falling to a 49-12 defeat at London Wasps.

Rising stars Matt Cox and Matt Mullan scored tries as a youthful Warriors put up a brave fight at Adams Park.

The home side eventually powered to a seven-try success as they ran out easy winners in the second half against a Warriors side missing a number of first team stars ruled out injured.


However, Director of Rugby Ruddock was keen to focus on the bigger picture in the Guinness Premiership defeat.


“We have to remember that we had eight players in the 22 from our Academy, two were making their debut,” he said.


“It is a big learning curve for them. Now they know how far they have to go to perform at this level. Tactically and professionally they will have learnt a lot.


“Jonny Arr had a good game and Matt Cox did really well. We will have a chat about his first half sin binning, it looked like youthful exuberance at the tackle area.


“We also had Matt Mullan who has been a big plus for us this season. He is proving himself to be a Guinness Premiership player and being able to play at hooker and loosehead prop makes him very special.


“The difference showed in the second half, we brought on Graham Kitchener who has got to go back after the game to do some school revision, Simon Shaw came on for them. That showed the difference.


“The young players will have learnt a lot from that and I have so too. It hurts to lose and we are not happy. But our focus is on the bigger picture, bringing these young players through and getting our big names back for next week against Bath.”


Warriors made an impressive start to the game and dominated the opening minutes until Cox was yellow carded.


A late surge from Wasps gave the scoreline a heavy look to it but Ruddock knew the best side on the day had triumphed.


“For the first ten minutes I thought we played some great rugby,” he added.


“We had good shape, great vision and showed some really good skills. We had a penalty chance early on but missed from out wide. We had a great start but couldn’t keep the momentum going against a very good side.


“We made some errors and allowed Wasps to capitalise, they were the better side by far. We also failed to capitalise on Lawrence Dallaglio being sin binned.


“We’re disappointed to concede so many points. Without Pat Sanderson we lacked a bit of leadership and struggled tactically. But that is a very good Wasps team and they pulled away.”


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