Director of Rugby Mike Ruddock remained positive for the future and insisted his Worcester Warriors would not dwell on defeat – as he immediately switched attention to the huge televised away clash at Sale Sharks on Friday evening.
Ruddock admitted his team was left hurting after a 39-18 defeat to Leicester Tigers in the Guinness Premiership on home soil.
But with only five league games remaining, Ruddock insisted the mood in the camp remained focussed on the task in hand and positive.
“The players are hurting, but we can’t change that or dwell on it. We have to dust ourselves down and get ready for Friday night,” he said.
“We turned over a lot of ball at the line-out and that was the root cause of our problems against Leicester.
“They picked Tom Croft – an extra line-out forward – and put a lot of pressure in the air on our line-out. We made some good calls, but we didn’t execute them to the way we wanted to and that hurt us.
“Obviously losing Chris Fortey and Matt Mullan were big blows to us, but in fairness to the youngster who did come on, they did really well.
“Aleki (Lutui) carried superbly and when the game was level-pegging he was causing great difficulties to Leicester with his ball-carrying.
“At the end of the day, we’re not going to make any excuses because Leicester were the better team. They were far more accurate, even though I thought there was plenty of endeavour about my team.
“We came up against our usual stumbling blocks of giving away penalties and not being accurate enough at times.
“We know we have to keep working at those things and we had a good chat after the game and the players are still very positive.”