Worcester Warriors boss bemoans ill-discipline (From Worcester News)

Worcester Warriors boss bemoans ill-discipline

10:00am Monday 3rd September 2012 in Sport By Tom Guest, @tomguestWN #WENsport

RICHARD Hill felt Warriors had ‘shot themselves in both feet’ with the manner in which they surrendered a 15-6 interval lead to suffer last-gasp heartache in the Aviva Premiership opener aginst Bath at Sixways .

A James Percival try and six Andy Goode penalties — the last of which put Worcester ahead in the 78th minute — should have been enough for victory.

But a penalty for not rolling away in the dying seconds allowed Olly Barkley to make it eight kicks out of eight and seal a 24-23 success for his side.

Hill said: “We played some good running stuff and scored the try, but we have shot ourselves in both feet. The discipline and penalty count will have to be highlighted.

“We knew Luke Pearce (referee) would be hot on rolling away from the tackle. “We had it written on a whiteboard at half-time to roll away from the tackle, but a few of our forwards flopped on the ball and did not roll away. That is not good enough, it has cost us the game and those people will be held accountable.

“They didn’t cause us any problems with the ball in hand, but those six penalties at the start of the second-half conceded field position. They then kept it until they got the penalties they wanted.”

The angry Warriors head coach has now challenged his players to bounce back with improved discipline in Saturday’s trip to Leicester Tigers, followed by the visit of Gloucester to Sixways.

He wants his Warriors to channel that anger and frustration in the right manner as they face up to the task ahead.

He added: “Everyone is bitterly disappointed, but also angry. We have lost and not been beaten by a better team, we have lost it ourselves through ill-discipline which is unacceptable.

“I can see from that performance that we can build on it, there is no doubt about that, but we need to sort the penalty count out. We have got to take our anger out on our next two opponents.

“We conceded those penalties and that cost us the game. There has been a lot of chat out there but, as Dean Schofield told the players at the end, it is one thing making noise and it’s another not committing penalties.”