Warriors’ pack causing worries for Sixways coaches (From Worcester News)

Richard Hill concerned by Worcester's set-piece problems

11:00am Monday 18th February 2013 in Sport By Tom Guest, @tomguestWN #WENsport

RICHARD HILL: Concerned by Worcester's set-piece.

WORCESTER’S under-performing set-piece is giving head coach Richard Hill plenty of cause for concern.

The Warriors eight were comprehensively out-played at both scrum and line-out by Northampton’s well-drilled eight as the Saints wrapped up a 27-18 victory at Sixways in the Aviva Premiership.

Hill admitted forward coach Nigel Redman is still finding his way in the job, but backed his side to find a way through their problems up front.

The Worcester boss said: “It would be a lie to say I’m not worried about our set-piece, it is a concern, but I am very confident that through the coaching and players we will work out a strategy to get better.

“It was a bad scrummaging day and we’re disappointed with that and we also failed to get a good strategy to stop their line-out drive, but they are very good at it.

“That didn’t work and clearly we have to go back to the drawing board and work out how we can try and manage to stop it when a side drives at us like that.

“Nigel is learning to look at each team we play against and see how their strategy works against us in the forwards and it is a good learning process for him as well.

“He will get better and he will learn how to deal with those situations. I am convinced he will go back and have a look at it with the forwards and work out a strategy so the next time it happens hopefully we can be a little bit more successful.”

Warriors are next in action on Friday night when they make the short trip down the M5 to face local rivals Gloucester at Kingsholm.

Hill added: “The players are pretty fresh and there are not many tired and battered bodies, so we can get ourselves turned around pretty quickly for Friday. We are looking forward to it.

“After the Saints game, James Percival and Matt Mullan said ‘I like playing this type of rugby’.

“They all say that we just have to persevere with this and there is no better place to kick-start it again than at Kingsholm on Friday night — we’ll give it a real go.”