WORCESTER Warriors missed a chance to take a step forward in their promotion push, according to director of rugby Dean Ryan.

Warriors recorded a 29-8 victory against bottom-of-the-table Plymouth Albion but they struggled to break down their lowly opposition for 50 minutes.

Ryan said: “We have been in this league now for six months and we know that every time we try to lift the tempo an opposition prop will go down. Every time something happens the referee will have a chat about it and every time we do something wrong we will get a yellow card.

“That’s pretty much what we have got to solve. This is not new — it happens all the time. We have to come to terms with it.

“We know we can win games but we also try to push what we are trying to do and to lose Ryan Mills and Cooper Vuna was damaging and we didn’t adapt very well to the changing personnel.

“It then became just about winning a game and I don’t know whether or not we looked in danger of not winning the game but we missed an opportunity to push ourselves on a little bit and being a little bit better.

“I am disappointed we didn’t get the opportunity to play the way we wanted to play.

“It doesn’t sit on one person’s shoulders but you get opportunities to play and you get your role and certain positions impact quite significantly on others and sometimes you are sat in the second row wondering what you do.

“Our line-out was not accurate and it began to creep a little bit. That was not great and let’s not hide from it. That was not good enough for where we want to be, but maybe that tells us some things along the way as well.”

Plymouth Albion head coach James Shanahan believes his side showed the “heart, commitment and hunger” needed in a relegation run-in.

Albion are four points adrift of Moseley at the bottom of the table with five matches remaining.

“I thought the boys were outstanding as a collective for 80 minutes to show that amount of heart, commitment and hunger for the shirt,” said Shanahan.

“We were outstanding defensively in the first-half — we had to be.

“Unfortunately, our line-out did not function and we did a lot of defending and Worcester scored from our mistake but, other than that, we dealt with most things.

“In the second-half we came out and scored an early try and then, for 50 minutes, we were well in the game.

“Unfortunately, against a top-quality side, we made a couple of poor errors and it gave Worcester opportunities.”

However, the game turned in Worcester’s favour when flanker Sam Simmonds was yellow-carded and the hosts took full advantage to score two converted tries.

“I don’t blame ‘Simmo’ for having a go at the ball – I thought it was a fair crack at the ball,” said Shanahan.

“Maybe he was on it a bit too long and the referee made the decision.”