Worcester count cost of shoddy discipline (From Worcester News)

Worcester count cost of shoddy discipline

6:50pm Sunday 21st February 2010 in

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DESPITE seeing his side slump to within a point of Guinness Premiership cellar-dwellers Leeds, Mike Rud-dock insists Worcester War-riors’ destiny is still very much in their own hands.

On current form it will be a straight shoot-out between the Yorkshire side and Rud-dock's men — with the outcome of April’s match at Headingley likely to be the deciding factor — to determine who will be playing in the Championship next season.

However, with five of War-riors’ remaining eight mat-ches on home soil, the Six-ways director of rugby be-lieves the run-in favours his team.

He said: “I think there is a dogfight for a number of teams — not just us.

“We’ve got eight games left and five of them are at home, it is in our hands to play well and make home advantage count in the run in.

“We have also got Sale Sharks to play away, we have had some good wins there in recent years, and we have got Leeds at Headingley as well. That is a big game for us too.

“Nothing has really chan-ged for us, we knew we would have to go and win those games anyway and that is what we need to do.”

The Worcester chief was again left to rue his side’s terrible disciplinary problems in the aftermath of the soul-destroying 37-13 loss at The Rec, which featured a red card for flanker Tom Wood and a sin-binning for Aussie full-back Chris La-tham.

Ruddock added: “I am as frustrated as anyone with the number of yellow cards. My video session of the Wembley game was basically going through each penalty with each player and asking them why they behaved the way they did, why they made that decision.

“Against Bath, both sides actually gave away the same amount of penalties, but I am trying my best to reduce that and I will be asking Ed Morrison this week if I can bring in a referee to work with us and give us some guidance.

“It is frustrating when we point these things out and work is done to correct them. Under fatigue and in the heat of battle some people are still making some bad decisions.

“We really hurt ourselves again with that red card. I told the players afterwards that we have to find a way of reducing the amount of penalties and yellow cards against us.

“We also lost Latham, just before Tom got sent off, which I thought was very harsh on him.

“Latham doesn’t need to change his line of run and that will be one to look at on the video."