FOR the second time in five Championship outings Richard Hill looked on in frustration as his pack was out-muscled by their opponents.

Firstly, Rotherham Titans came to Sixways and bossed the forwards’ exchanges and now much the same has happened against Doncaster Knights.

Although Warriors dominated the opening 20 minutes of the nerve-jangling 30-28 success, the visiting eight were well on top for most of the afternoon.

Hill admitted he was surprised by this after naming a bulky pack to avoid a repeat of the Rotherham showing, when he was forced into making changes at half-time.

He said: “I was surprised the forwards struggled like they did because we had a heavy old pack out there. After the Rotherham experience, where we were a little bit lightweight, we did go for a heavier eight and that should have been a good scrummaging pack.

“We’re not spending hours and hours on the scrummaging machine at the moment because we’re working on other areas of our 15-man game, so we might have to go on the machine a bit more.”

Hill was disappointed by his team’s overall performance, but was relieved they managed to close out the victory late on.

He added: “The first 20 minutes were outstanding, we looked on fire and scored a couple of lovely tries and it looked like it was going to be a reasonably comfortable afternoon.

“However, the last 60 minutes were disappointing, but all credit to Doncaster, because their forwards got into the game, made life difficult and put our scrum under pressure.

“We conceded too many penalties at the scrum and they worked their way back into the game with some good forward play.

“At the end we had to play a get out of jail card with a penalty right at the last.

“They only had to keep the ball for another 30 seconds and then kick the ball off the field to win the game. Although I am the eternal optimist, there wasn’t a lot of optimism in me with about 30 seconds to go.

“We have won, though, and that 30 seconds at the end made the evening more pleasurable than it would have been otherwise.”

Hill had words with Alex Crockett after the game as the centre picked up his second successive sin-binning and almost cost Warriors the game.

The Warriors coach explained: “Alex picked up his second yellow card in two games and I did speak to him about it afterwards.

“We made a defensive error, Doncaster made a line break and, if he’d not tugged one of their players back, they may well have scored a try, so he can be slightly forgiven for that. It doesn’t help being down to 14 men though.

“There was another penalty by him right at the end too and I wasn’t happy with him after the game. On reflection, though, I looked at it again and their number seven tackled Alex and did a good job of dropping his elbow and keeping him pinned in there.

“Their seven was a useful player and had the intelligence to pin Alex down so he couldn’t get away and make it look like a penalty. Alex could have made a bit more effort to try and wriggle out of it, but the flanker did a good job on him. I have partially forgiven that one.”