Ruddock orders Warriors to re-focus

Mike Ruddock urged his Worcester Warriors to refocus on the upcoming league game ahead with Harlequins after watching his team fall to defeat at Bath Rugby.

Worcester lost for a third time this season after a first half blitz put the hosts in control before a second half fight-back from Ruddock’s men.

Director of Rugby Ruddock admitted the score line had hurt his side but ordered his squad to immediately switch their attention to the visit of Quins on Thursday (8pm kick-off) and a massive home encounter.


“We now need to refocus, we have got a big game with Quins coming up and we owe our fans a good show on home soil,” he said.


“We have had three difficult away trips and now we can look forward to going back home and getting a result before the break from league action.”


Bath ran in five tries to consign Worcester to a 37-19 defeat but Ruddock was delighted with the commitment his side showed to battle back after a first half double-try blow and threaten a comeback.


“At 25-19 with only six minutes to go it was a critical time,” he said. “We decided to try and go for the win and move the ball wide from the kick-off.


“We felt there was a potential high tackle that could have been called and it wasn’t, then all of a sudden the ball popped away and Bath were free. It was a critical moment and that one the gods were now quite with us.


“The final score hurt us and the fact that they scored a number of tries disappoints us. But we have had two big battles in recent weeks at home to Tigers, when we outscored them by two tries to one, and before that beating Wasps.


“Against Bath we were very competitive for long periods but we had the odd spell when we dropped our standards and Bath profited from that. We didn’t dominate the collisions for five minutes and they hurt us with real pace.


“For 20 minutes for the second half we were very competitive but one bad kick from us resulted in them breaking away and scoring.


“But overall the last few weeks have been positive in terms of our performance levels.”


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