WARRIORS have signed Rotherham lock Dan Sanderson for next season and Dean Ryan is also on the look-out for an injury dispensation signing to ease his prop problems.

The 29-year-old former Moseley second rower worked with Worcester’s high performance director Nick Jonhston during his season with Northampton Saints and will join from Worcester from Championship club in the summer.

Meanwhile, with John Andress dropping out at the 11th hour before Saturday’s Aviva Premiership defeat to Sale Sharks and Euan Murray only just finding his way back after serious Achilles and thumb injuries, Ryan’s front row resources are stretched to breaking point.

That leaves Rob O’Donnell as Ryan’s only fully fit tighthead and the Warriors boss admits he may need to look to bring in reinforcements.

Ryan said: “John has a disc issue, like most tighthead props, and he chose on the day of the game that it was sorer than normal.

“It is something we’ve been aware of this week and we may have to look at injury dispensation as it looks like Jeremy Becasseau is going to require surgery as well.

“It is something we’ll have to look at as being so light on tightheads when Euan hadn’t trained all week isn’t good, but that’s the situation we are in.

“We’ve only had two tightheads for seven months now and we’re still in the same situation, just with a different two.”

He added: “We will need to explore our relationships, but there is not a Dan Cole waiting around the corner.

“We might be able to change the dynamics around that because we haven’t been able to scrum as well as we should and Sale have squeezed the life out of us in each game we’ve played them.

“It’s the nature of my job to try to get someone in, but it doesn’t put us on a strong front – we’ll talk to other clubs and see if we can add to our mix. We’ll probably find now that Euan will get picked for Scotland now – that’s how life tends to work.

“We lost a tighthead on the morning of the game, so had to make a decision on Euan, who hadn’t trained with us. We decided to start with him so we knew where we were, rather than sending Rob O’Donnell out and then bringing Euan on without knowing what that situation would look like.

“Those circumstances led to a pretty disjointed scrum performance against a side with a very good scrum, so I’m not surprised we struggled.

“I wasn’t surprised that we weren’t able to answer the challenge because we have history of that at scrum time against Sale on repeat occasions.

“Euan couldn’t answer it and Rob struggled too in the latter stages of the game and that just leaks field position, discipline and everything else.”