DIRECTOR of rugby Dean Ryan admitted Worcester Warriors’ first-half performance was “terrible” and “unacceptable” in their 20-13 defeat at London Irish.

Warriors’ boss said he hadn’t recognised what he had seen from his players in the opening 40 minutes as Irish took a firm grip of the Aviva Premiership bottom-of-the-table clash.

Worcester trailed 10-3 at the interval but were fortunate to remain in the contest because Irish dominated territory and possession while butchering several try-scoring opportunities.

“I thought the first 40 minutes were terrible,” said Ryan. “I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s not what we’ve seen in the past.

“We had a late change with Tommy Heathcote getting injured in the warm-up (replaced by Ryan Lamb) but we had a revolving door for 40 minutes, which then unsettled everybody and I think we froze a little bit.

“It was unacceptable to play in a game of this magnitude and not have the energy we needed.

“There’s no hiding away from that — there’s no papering over the cracks and there’s no talking about the last 20 minutes and how perhaps we might have got something from the match.

“They (London Irish) were in charge of that game for 50 to 60 minutes without a doubt. They missed a couple of opportunities, which would have put the game away from us.

“We lost the battle of energy and commitment by a mile and immediately afterwards I can’t come up with reasons why we haven’t shown them.

“Lacking that isn’t something that’s been inherent because we haven’t fallen off games but not to have had it in the first half-hour was just unacceptable.

“There’s no point me throwing comments around because I don’t quite understand why it has happened.

“Being disrupted wasn’t enough. We ended up having to move people around to solve the problem of why we wouldn’t tackle down the transition zone between nine and 10.

“Once we did that, they started to capitalise on us having too many moving parts, so the decision was made to move Ryan Mills at half-time and to try to solidify that area but we lost some attacking threat.

“We had a similar situation at Wasps but it’s not Millsy’s issue. It’s just part of the shift.

“It gave us enough of a platform to have a chance to come away with a point but not enough for us to warrant winning the match.”

Ryan said he was relieved when the half-time whistle arrived with Warriors trailing by just seven points.

“Irish had plenty of opportunities and thank goodness for the TMO (television match official) because otherwise the game was gone,” said Ryan.

“That’s because we weren’t prepared to stand in a line and defend.

“The TMO situation kept us alive. Anything can happen in a rugby game but did we deserve to get more out of it? No, we didn’t.”

Warriors conceded far too many penalties at the breakdown area with Irish comfortably coming out on top.

Ryan rued: “We came into a game like this and gave them soft penalties, so they were able to kick out of their 22.

“Perhaps we have a balancing act of over-enthusiastic people versus under-enthusiastic people? I don’t understand it.

“If we had given away penalties by flying into tackles, I would understand that but we didn’t. Therefore, I don’t get our ill-discipline.”