Ulster 10 Worcester Warriors 23

9:44pm Wednesday 27th August 2008

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WORCESTER Warriors turned in an impressive performance as they continued to warm up for the new Guinness Premiership season in style with a 23-10 win over Ulster at Ravenhill.

Ulster provided Warriors with their toughest pre-season challenge so far but Mike Ruddock’s men rose to the challenge with a trio of tries from Will Bowley, Netani Talei and Matt Powell to clinch their third pre-season victory.

Most eyes were on new Australian full-back Chris Latham as he made his Warriors debut.

He showed glimpses of his class and was no doubt impressed by his team-mates as they turned on a super-show in the opening quarter.

The opening 20 minutes of the game saw both sides play with real attacking verve and Worcester showed their potency with some intelligent moves.

Ruddock’s men scored the opening try of the game when skipper Pat Sanderson was alert to take advantage of a turn-over and flicked the ball to Bowley who raced away to score .

New fly-half Matt Jones, who looked lively during the first period, confidently added the conversion to an early penalty to give the visitors a 10-0 lead.

Ulster responded by putting Worcester under pressure after charging down a kick by Latham. However, a strong at-tacking platform on the Worcester line was lost when the hosts knocked on.

But the Irish side were not to be denied and, just before the break, home fly-half Ian Humphreys slotted a penalty to cut the lead to 10-3.

Worcester, who replaced Ryan Powell with Jonny Arr in a late change to the bench, continued to press in the second-half and neat attacking moves saw Fijian back-row Talei and Matt Powell cross with Ulster responding with a try to take the score to 20-10.

Samoan Loki Crichton came on and slotted a penalty to put further breathing space between the sides.

Despite the loss of prop Chris Horsman to the sin-bin three minutes from time, Worcester held on to secure another important victory on the eve of the new Guinness Premiership season.