WITH one eye on Perpignan, Warriors boss Richard Hill was delighted with the professional manner in which his side have taken maximum points from back-to-back clashes with the two whipping boys in Worcester’s Amlin Challenge Cup pool.

As is the case every year, the group was always going to be a question of if Warriors could out-qualify whichever French side they were paired with.

That turned out to be Perpignan and the Sixways side have made a decent start to the competition with 10 points out of a possible 10 as well as boosting their points difference to a massive plus-167. It is 22 better than their French rivals ahead of the two clubs’ December double-header.

Hill, who watched his side crush Italians Rovigo 90-3 a week after the 85-5 demolition of Bizkaia Gernika, said: “We wanted to make sure that if it is close, in a head-to-head, then we will lead. That could be crucial.

“We want to have a quarter-final and a home tie, you could see the players were working hard to do that. We had to get the five points and a good points difference which gives us a fine chance of going through the group.

“We always knew Perpignan was going to be the big one. We would like to be top when we play them at home.”

On Worcester’s one-sided, 14-try drubbing of the Italian battlers, Hill added: “I was pleased with the victory.

“The only thing that disappointed me was at the end of the first-half when we had gone 31-0 up and went off the boil. We had a little chat in the dressing room, told them we had to step it back up and I was very pleased that the players responded to score just under 60 points and nine tries in the second-half.

“We broke the record last week in Gernika when we scored 13 tries, so there was a little incentive to get 14. It’s nice to break records, not nice for Rovigo, but the players enjoyed themselves and what pleased me most is that we held onto most of the passes.

“I thought Rovigo were a better team than Gernika come half-time, they were more competitive, and I felt we would struggle to put 80 points on them. But, to the players’ credit, those that came off the bench added extra pace and we scored some good stuff with off-loading and handling. We were pretty clinical.”