Richard Hill has ordered his Worcester Warriors to play with ‘more fire in the belly’ and go up the gears when they face Bristol Rugby in the RFU Championship at Sixways on Friday night (kick-off 8pm).
Worcester sit top of the table after the opening six games of the league season but Hill is adamant the time has now arrived for his squad to produce the displays both he and supporters crave.
The Head Coach believes the Warriors will face the top five teams in the RFU Championship over the next five weeks and must up performance levels to maintain the proud unbeaten record.
And he has drilled the message home to the squad this week after announcing his starting line-up on Monday.
“It is important for us to put down a marker in this game. We need to bring a bit of extra fire in the belly and everything should fall into place,” he said.
“We haven't yet reached the heights of physical commitment that we will need to for the latter rounds. We've had a good chat this week and now is the time to crank that up a little bit, so I'll be very surprised if I don't see us go up a couple of gears against Bristol.
“I'm very confident we'll see an extra bit of zip in the Worcester player and as a result lot of the frustrating unforced errors will be cut out, because the players will be that little bit more motivated.
“I think the home fans will see a cracking game between two good teams who both like to play rugby. Because we know each other well from Premiership days, those collisions will be that little bit bigger than they have been of late.
“Anyone who comes along will see a good old battle with some interesting one-on-one hits going in!”
Hill will announce his team to the public tomorrow (Thursday) but will be without the services of the injured Pat Sanderson.
“Pat has had a really rough period of injuries and he hasn’t been able to string together games,” said Hill.
“He has taken another injury to his shoulder and that will put him out for between 10 days and three weeks.
“We will, however, have Kai Horstmann and Miles Benjamin back into the starting line-up and Kai will resume the captaincy.”
Tickets for the home RFU Championship clash with Bristol remain on sale – and you can still take advantage of the special Friday Night Fever deal. Click HERE for more information.
Call the Warriors Box Office on 01905 454183 or click HERE to find out how you can take your seat.