WARRIORS prop George Porter believes Worcester’s pack is benefitting from the extra impetus brought by a new-look coaching team.

Under the previous Richard Hill regime, part-time coaches were employed on a consultancy basis, but loosehead Porter has been impressed by the new approach.

With Dean Ryan at the helm, former Sixways loosehead Ceri Jones has been appointed as a full-time scrum coach, while all departments of the backroom team have been beefed up.

Porter said: “Ceri puts a lot of time in – we had Phil Vickery in the past and he’s a nice bloke, but Ceri has devoted all his time to our scrum.

“I respect Phil massively and he has obviously done a lot in the game. But, with someone like Ceri about daily and if you need to look at something, you can sit down with him and go through things in detail. Also, with him being a loosehead too, it is very helpful for me.

“I had never worked with Dean or Carl (Hogg, forwards coach) before but I’d only ever heard good things about them. I didn’t have any problems with Nigel (Redman) or Hilly – they were both great blokes – but the detail that has been added to our training now is unbelievable. It’s a different club.”

Despite the improvements off the field, director of rugby Ryan has been hindered by a host of injuries, particularly in the pack.

Ryan added: “We haven’t had Euan (Murray) fully fit this season – he had to have his Achilles stripped out and he was not on the top of his form when he came back.

“Ofa Fainga’anuku was injured all summer after arriving, so if they’d all been together all season, we might not have lost matches late on, but that’s the situation we’re in.

“But now we have a pretty fearsome scrum. When I saw Paul James, Rob Webber and Anthony Perenise in the Bath front row and that sort of size, it could have been a tough game, but I thought we were pretty unlucky not to get some reward.”