Hill wants ‘raging bulls’ from the start

Head Coach Richard Hill ordered his team to start playing like ‘raging bulls’ from the start of games – after a last 20-minute super show from Warriors saw them fight-back to claim a 33-13 victory over Plymouth Albion at Sixways.

Albion had threatened a big league win after a breakaway try from scrum half Tom Kessell saw them take a second half lead and wipe out three earlier penalties from the boot of Joe Carlisle.

The shock of going behind, though, fired Worcester into life and four tries in the final quarter from Pat Sanderson, Tom Arscott, Marcel Garvey and Oliver Tomasazczyk saw them take maximum points.

However, Hill was left unimpressed by the opening hour and admitted the team needed to ‘get angry’ from the first whistle rather than use power off the bench to win games.

“I enjoyed watching the last 20 minutes – the first 60 minutes left a lot to be desired,” said Hill. “It was only after Plymouth had scored their try to lead 10-9, we got angry and then we started to play.

“We'll have to find that anger in the dressing room before we go out for matches because, looking ahead to the play-offs, we can't afford to start games like that. Better teams than Plymouth would have scored a couple of tries on that first-half.

“We have to find the key to get them to start well – get them angry in the dressing room, so they go out there like raging bulls and start as we mean to go on.

“We set ourselves a target of getting a bonus point, so to not have scored any by half-time, was lacklustre – there was no spark, energy or sharpness. The coaches will have to look at why we keep starting slowly at home.

“When it looked like we could lose the game, we got angry and started to play well – the forwards produced some scintillating plays through Pat Sanderson and Greg Rawlinson, Alex Crockett ran like he really meant it, bouncing people off him, and Marcel Garvey finished off a superb length-of-the-field try. That's what we need to do – we need to wake up quickly and produce that early on in games.”

Hill was also critical of the kicking game his side adopted and lack of ‘Premiership intensity’ that he wants from his players.

He added: “We didn't keep the ball for four phases and that was one of the two things we talked about before the game – the other was to have Premiership intensity. For the first 60 minutes, we did neither, but fortunately the replacements did bring a bit of that.

“We kicked too much ball away – they kicked to us and we returned it straight to them so they could kick to the corner and we seemed to watch the ball roll into touch rather than putting our foot on it. We'd then clear the ball from the line-out and they'd run straight back at us.

“We were better in the second-half when we kept hold of the ball more and ran it back at them, but before that we made their full-back look almost the best player on the field as we kicked it down his throat.

“We were quite a way short of Premiership intensity in the first-half, but I still think we have been operating at about 60 per cent of our capability in most areas.”


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