DONNCHA O’Callaghan was critical of his own performance as captain in Worcester Warriors’ 35-8 defeat at Newcastle Falcons.

The vastly-experienced lock was appointed club skipper for the 2017/18 campaign, replacing number eight Gerrit-Jan van Velze.

But O’Callaghan felt he did not ensure Warriors were “ready to go” for their Aviva Premiership opener at Kingston Park last Friday.

And the 38-year-old also highlighted his failure to stop Simon Hammersley who swept past him before Rob Vickers crashed over in the second half.

“I had a terrible missed tackle for the try,” the Ireland legend said.

“I have to look at my performance and judge whether it was good enough, but I can tell you now it was 100 per cent not (good enough).

“If I want to lead and talk to the boys I need to do it from the front and I certainly didn’t do that (against Newcastle).

“I won’t be asking them from now on to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself.”

Warriors trailed Newcastle by just two points when Josh Adams went over at the start of the second period.

But Falcons then hit back with 25 unanswered points and O’Callaghan admitted Worcester did not stick to their game plan.

“What is frustrating is that sometimes we went off script and tried to make things happen,” O’Callaghan said.

“If we are completely honest we are not good enough to do that. We have to buy into the structure and the plan.

“I will take it on the chin because from a leadership point of view I didn’t have the guys ready to go and that lies with me.”

The second row added: “Lineout calls went well, but then on the big play ones we seemed to cough up one or two of them and that’s the frustration of the night.

“I will be honest Newcastle fully deserved the win, but we are massively frustrated.”