Hill delighted to edge dogfight with Welsh

Head Coach Richard Hill was pleased to see his Warriors claim some early Christmas cheer as they edged out London Welsh 13-6 in the Aviva Premiership at Sixways.

Number Eight Semisi Taulava grabbed the only try of the game at soggy Sixways as Worcester secured another crucial league win.

“It’s a big result before Christmas and will make everyone happy,” said Hill. “It was a potential banana skin because we knew London Welsh had rested their first team against Grenoble over the last two weeks.

“They had kept players fresh while we had two big games against Perpignan and we wanted to get to the quarter final of the Amlin Challenge Cup.

“They targeted this game, but after two big games against Perpignan we dug in again in poor conditions.

“James Percival summed it up in the huddle at the end. Last year we would have lost that game, we wouldn’t have had the spirit, fight and belief to keep going and keep them out defensively.

“It took a little bit of quality at the end to break the deadlock between the teams.”

Hill also had words of praise for try-scoring Taulava adding: “He was my man-of-the-match in the last 20 minutes. He is an interesting character and whether he can read my mind I’m not sure.

“I’m on the verge of saying we should take him off and he always produces something fantastic. He did it again today.

“He produces two or three carries which were superb and gets the try as well. He must read my mind or looks across and can see what I am going to do because he steps up a gear.

Conditions dictate tactics, but Hill conceded afterwards that he had wanted his Warriors to try and play more rugby in the wet weather.

He added: “We kicked too much and I was getting frustrated. That was not in the plan to kick that much.

“We will look at that, we are better than that and we can keep the ball in hand better. Perhaps we got a little bit nervous and they were kicking better than we were and we put ourselves under unnecessary pressure.

“We were better towards the end, when we used the short side with Jonny Arr and attacked open to find extra space.

“The difference between the two sides was that we did find some space wider channels to move their pack around a bit. We are better with the ball in hand than we are kicking it away.

“We can’t expect to pay brilliant every single week, this was a tough one and London welsh are a hard team to beat. But we have kept the ball rolling.

“We might have to freshen it up for Sale, but we will not stop yet and we will go flat out and there will be little Christmas time for the players to enjoy because we are treating Sale very seriously.


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