Richard Hill picks out turning point in Worcester Warriors defeat (From Worcester News)

Richard Hill picks out turning point in Worcester Warriors defeat

7:00am Monday 11th February 2013 in Sport By Tom Guest, @tomguestWN #WENsport

ALEKI LUTUI: Held up over the line.

RICHARD Hill pinpointed Warriors’ failure to score a try early in the second-half as the decisive moment in his side’s 32-9 defeat at Bath.

After an even opening 40 minutes, Worcester made a bright start to the second-half with Bath pinned in their own 22, conceding penalties and down to 14 men after lock Dave Attwood was sin-binned.

Captain James Percival turned down a shot at goal in favour of a driving line-out but hooker Aleki Lutui was held up over the line.

Bath were clearly boosted by their defensive fortitude and then heaped misery on Warriors by racing down the pitch for Tom Biggs to score a try that broke the visitors’ spirit.

Sixways head coach Hill said: “I’m disappointed because a lot of effort went in. For the first 40 minutes, I felt we took the sting out of Bath and then we had good pressure at the start of the second-half.

“We had a great chance to score from the driving line-out and then the scrum. That was the turning point and all the effort, around six or seven minutes of sustained pressure, came to nothing.

“If we had scored then, we would have gone into the lead and that would have given us a huge boost in confidence.

“Bath would have had to look hard at themselves.

“Not only did we not get over then, we conceded a penalty and from the line-out they scored. It was a killer blow and knocked the stuffing out of everyone.

“If we had scored then we had a chance of beating Bath, they weren’t on top form, but once they got that score their confidence soared and it was a hard afternoon.”

Hill added: “The comments in the dressing room at half-time were that we had made mistakes but we were working so hard to cover them up.

“We were under the pump a little bit but the will and energy was superb.

“We just needed that score and, when you are in our part of the table, one score makes a huge difference to the confidence.

“You could see it was the game-changing moment, we had to score then.

“Psychologically, as a defence, if you can defend on your own line for several minutes and come away with a penalty, then the swing in confidence is massive.

“You could almost see that the game had gone.”