YOU’LL often hear coaches trot out the cliché that winning is a habit.

Unfortunately, the same can also be said about losing, and Worcester Warriors need to kick it soon.

Dean Ryan’s team have now lost 12 games on the bounce, seven of which have been in the Aviva Premiership.

A season that started out so promisingly has once again turned into a campaign with Warriors looking over their shoulders.

Sunday’s 20-13 loss at London Irish has well and truly dragged them into an all-too-familiar relegation battle.

But let’s try to focus on the positives for a moment.

Despite it being February, we are still only halfway through the season.

There is plenty of time for Worcester to turn this around.

Generally speaking, Warriors are not being battered out of sight in games.

In three of those seven defeats they earned losing bonus points.

They led Leicester Tigers 17-7 at half-time in December before going down 29-20 and know they should have beaten Wasps last month, inexplicably leaking two tries in the last two minutes.

They now face back-to-back fixtures at Sixways, where both of their wins to date have come – against Northampton Saints in the season curtain-raiser and relegation rivals Newcastle Falcons in November.

Warriors have played well enough in spells on their own patch to suggest that neither Bath nor Sale will be in for an easy ride. Indeed, Bath have pressures of their own, having not triumphed since beating Worcester 21-14 at The Rec on December 27.

A win for Ryan and his men at the weekend would only add to that, even if their West Country rivals have played one game fewer.

At this stage, Warriors’ destiny is still very much in their own hands and they couldn’t ask for much more than two home games in a week as they try to stop the rot.