WARRIORS’ team selection plans for tomorrow night’s Amlin Challenge Cup clash with Biarritz at Sixways (7.45pm) have been hamstrung by red tape.

The strict player registration criteria of tournament organisers ERC are causing Worcester chief Dean Ryan a few headaches, such as not yet having been able to name a replacement hooker on the bench.

He explained: “Because Chris Brooker is not clear from a knock at the weekend, Nick Seymour is our emergency front row replacement, which we are requested to have.

“If we don’t name Nick, we won’t have two hookers in the squad as you have to, but we can’t name him until someone says ‘yes, he is registered’. Welcome to ERC regulations!

“With Chris not making it, we have had to apply for Nick to come in as an emergency hooker, which we haven’t been given yet. If that happens, Cam Goodhue has to go out as we would have too many foreigners, so it is causing us some problems.

“We are restricted a little bit and we’re still trying to keep some consistency, but we are short on resources – back row especially.

“Also, we were not allowed to name Richard de Carpentier because of last night’s hearing, but I thought you were innocent until proven guilty – I might even have dusted off my boots if I was registered!”

Ryan added: “We are going to try to look at some young players, but there’s less scope than we’d like because of ERC regulations.

“We had to make that judgment with a lot of the young fellas back in September and I was desperate for people like Tiff Eden to get some game time in Europe, so I named him in our squad with the hope of doing what we’ve done with Max Stelling and Ben Howard, but he is not fit so we have to play both Ignacio Mieres and Paul Warwick.”

Warriors: Pennell; Stephenson, Grove, Matavesi, Hammond; Warwick, Su’a; Fainga’anuku, Shervington, O’Donnell, Percival, Galarza, Jones, Betty, Thomas. Replacements: TBC, Porter, Andress, Williams, Schofield, Hodgson, Mieres, Stelling.