THE new artificial grass pitch at Sixways may give Worcester Warriors an advantage at home, insists the club’s high performance director Nick Johnston.

He feels Warriors looked “pretty comfortable” on a similar pitch at Newcastle Falcons for their first away Premiership triumph in two years, winning 15-14.

Johnston also claimed the club’s artificial training surface had helped Warriors in their aim to remain in the top tier last season.

“We strongly believe our resources and facilities helped us to stay in the Premiership,” said Johnston as Warriors look to build on 10th place last term.

“We could train all year as we had an artificial grass pitch and other clubs were going everywhere and not actually training sometimes.

“We built our whole programme around being robust for 10 consecutive league games. We felt we got through that period pretty unscathed.

“We had two or three players missing, where some clubs had 15 or 16 out from the midway point, and won five out of 10 games.

“We felt the pitch gave us an advantage practising and playing on it. We saw that when we went to Newcastle and were pretty comfortable on their surface.”

While Warriors already had an artificial training surface, they played on grass at Sixways before installing a state-of-the-art, all-weather surface from specialists Limonta Sport this summer.

Johnston said: “We believe it may give us an advantage at home but other teams now have access to them, so how much that will be we don’t know.

“The surface has a natural feel and it’s bedding in. The more traffic they get, the better pitches they become. The key thing is maintenance.”

There have been dissenting voices on social media from some supporters, who would prefer traditional grass.

But Johnston said: “Ball in play time on an artificial surface is similar to grass and the injury rates are the same. The evidence is embryonic but the due diligence and level of investigation we did before we made the decision to put down the new pitch was geared around athlete safety.

“We were more than comfortable that the surface is good and safe. We think it will provide spectators and fans with open, fast rugby where muddy conditions won’t affect things.”