Worcester Warriors chief Dean Ryan: Our Premiership survival fight sits in "core of squad"

Warriors have signed 28-year-old South African flanker Dewald Potgieter, who has been plying his trade in Japan for Yamaha Jubilo since 2013.

And experienced South African scrum-half Francois Hougaard is being linked with a short-term deal at Warriors from next month.

Ryan admitted the pressure was now firmly on 10th-placed Worcester after their dismal showing in Sunday’s 20-13 defeat at relegation rivals London Irish.

Asked whether he planned to strengthen the squad further, Ryan said: “We have a couple of ideas.

“We will play them out if we can but they do not solve our issues.

“It’s solved from within with how much the players already here want to stay in the Premiership and how much they want Warriors to be successful.

“New players might add something but if that core group hasn’t got it in the middle you are sticking them in a black hole.

“Whatever we talk about over the next few weeks, it sits right firmly with this group.”

Hougaard has played 35 Tests for South Africa and is sacrificing a Super Rugby season to make the Springbok sevens team for the Rio Olympics later this year.

The 27-year-old has spent eight seasons with Pretoria-based Blue Bulls and is believed to have held talks with Warriors.

Worcester were second best for most of Sunday’s match against Irish and their first-half performance was woeful.

They have lost 12 successive matches and sit just one point above second-from-bottom Irish and basement boys Newcastle Falcons.

Ryan admitted: “If we are honest, we had momentum going into the season and we missed two or three opportunities. This league won’t allow you to do that without dragging you back into where we are now.

“London Irish was probably the last opportunity for us to create space and put pressure on them. We missed it, so the pressure is firmly on us.

“One more win would have given us a springboard but we didn’t get it.

“We have to go to Newcastle and London Irish have got to come to us. There’s a lot to be played for but right now our focus is understanding we’re in a fight.

“I am not prepared to defend the first 40 minutes against Irish because it was unacceptable from a team, who have so much support and so many people following it around. It’s unacceptable.”

Warriors’ preparations for the bottom-of-the-table battle were hampered when fly-half Tom Heathcote was injured in the warm-up and replaced by Ryan Lamb.

However, Lamb looked short of match sharpness and confidence and was hauled off at the interval.

Ryan explained: “Tom had a spasm in his back five minutes from the end of the warm-up and it just locked down, so we ended up changing it two or three minutes before coming out and I changed it again at half time.

“There was no point talking about what we might do in attack if we couldn’t stop what they (Irish) were doing with our defence.

“We lost some sharpness in attack. We had to because otherwise we were going to lose by a significant margin.”

Ryan revealed Sam Betty was still suffering from concussion and wing Sam Smith “is a long way off” with a quad problem as they prepare for Saturday’s crucial match against a misfiring Bath at Sixways (3pm).

Ninth-placed Bath are on a wretched run and their 15-11 loss to rivals Gloucester was a seventh defeat in 10 Premiership matches.

Ryan added: “I am sure it takes on massive significance for them (Bath) with the resources and players they’ve got. For us, it’s just another game we want to win.”