Head Coach Richard Hill insisted the heavy defeat to Scarlets in wet conditions in Wales had been the strong defensive test his Warriors had needed ahead of the new RFU Championship season.
Warriors suffered a 43-14 defeat at Parc y Scarlets as the home side played some scintillating running rugby and took full advantage of yellow cards to Oriol Ripol and Andy Goode.
Hill now has a week to prepare his team for the opening league clash with Birmingham & Solihull at Sixways on Saturday (kick-off 3pm).
And he believes the manner of defeat in Wales was the wake-up call his team needed after one –sided victories over Stourbridge and Newport Gwent Dragons.
“We need a game like that – it was a very big defensive test for us,” he said.
“In our first two games we have utilisied our attack and that has looked good. But today it was a case of working on the defence and Scarlets were very strong.
“It will be interesting for me to look at the tackles, look at our defensive organisation. I couldn’t tell too much about our defence from the first two games so this was the ideal gauge for us.
“They tested us to the full in defence and kept the continuity going, they were much bigger and more physical than Newport and Stourbridge and took advantage of our yellow cards which we have to look at.
“It’s easy to look after the ball when tackles aren’t as big, we were carrying ball today and the Scarlets were pressing up hard and making big tackles.
“We spilt some ball and they scored some tries by turning the ball over in the tackle through much stronger and physical defence.
“It brings home that message going into the Championship that we are going to have to be a little better at what we do. Birmingham & Solihull will come to upset us, they will be highly motivated on day one and we can expect a difficult game.”
Hill was also pleased to see his side quickly realise after the game the hard work they still need to do to adopt the press defence successfully.
“This was just the sort of game where it brings you all back down to earth – which is what we needed,” said Hill.
“I think they all thought that this new press defence would just happen, we would shift from a drift defence to a press defence.
“But it takes months to sort out and I have explained this to people, perhaps they thought it was going to be easy.
“They have been severely tested by a Scarlets defence that knows how to break down a press defence and we were found wanting on a few occasions.
“All the players are now talking in the dressing room about having to work harder in defence and that is superb because we will have a good go at that next week.
“The players are very disappointed because we were beaten well today, but in the first half we deliberately started with those that had not got much game time,” he added.
“Andy Williams had a start, Andy Goode played his first game and so did Neil Best. Players like Chris Fortey and Greg King had starts.
“There are a number of players there who hadn’t done quite as much training as other people in the squad and it was a tough ask for them to come down here and play at that pace.
“The last 20 minutes we put on the players that had completed most of pre-season and were the sharpest. We looked a lot better in that period and it was one try each which was a good reflection going into next week.
“We got better in the second half and drawing the last period gives us a lift going into next week.”