WORCESTER Warriors director of rugby Mike Ruddock plans to consign his side's Guinness Premiership opening day defeat at Bath to the history books and look to the future.

Ruddock's side were second best as the hosts eased to a comfortable 29-15 bonus-point victory at a red hot Rec, but the new Sixways chief is confident his charges can move on to better things.

The former Wales Grand Slam-winning coach admitted his side were probably short of match-practice after a brief pre-season campaign, but believes that is behind them now.

He said: "I didn't enjoy my first game as Warriors director of rugby and I don't think the players did either. However, there are things to build on. My worry going into the game was that we might be a little under-cooked and hopefully that is out of our system now.

"We now need to push forward and push on, but lets not forget Bath - they came out of the blocks well, scored some nice tries and pressurised us.

"It actually reminded me of my first game in charge of the Dragons, we didn't play well on the opening day then but towards the end of the season we were right in there in contention in terms of the league, hopefully there will be a little bit of deja vu and we will recover quickly."

Ruddock admitted he was annoyed by the amount of unforced errors his side made, but added his team is still one in transition. He said: "We're hugely disappointed and hugely frustrated, I said that to the players after the game and they will be feeling the same.

"At half-time it was pretty simple for me - firstly, we were knocking on and turning the ball over and secondly we were missing tackles. It's a pretty simple game and you can't go to the icing on the cake without getting the basics right.

"We've tried to retain what was good about the Worcester game - I thought overall the set-piece was excellent and we don't want to lose that - but obviously in the modern game you've got to do something with the ball and we've tried to widen our options.

"You''ve got to execute your skills properly so you can build up momentum and we didn't do that, which was disappointing for me and the players.

"There were far too many errors and we paid for it, we didn't put our game together and looked like a side that was in between game plans. A little bit of the old and a little bit of the new and nothing really sticking.

"Our first-half performance against London Irish in pre-season gave us confidence in our skills but under pressure they weren't good enough today. We never got the momentum to build our game and apply any real pressure on Bath.

"We did really well to get a nice try from our line-out in the first-half, Bath had dominated and we were suddenly back in the game.

"But we missed a few crucial kicks that would have given us a lot more encouragement and we made a few errors at critical times in the second-half, a knock-on denied us a try which again might just have settled us down.

"It didn't happen and I guess we didn't deserve it with the way we played, we were just knocking balls down at crucial times."

Bath coach Steve Meehan said: "Worcester have still got a great set-piece, they've got some big men who can get over the top and off-load the ball and with the new backs they have coming they will be a very good side."