6:40pm Sunday 17th January 2010
By Tom Guest
THE biggest positive to come out of this Amlin Challenge Cup mis-match will be that Worcester Warriors finally rediscovered their try-scoring touch — albeit against a limited Olympus Rugby XV Madrid outfit.
Mike Ruddock’s men ran in eight unanswered scores, including a second-half hat-trick for impressive back-row forward Matt Cox, during a one-sided affair, which was little more than a training match as neither side can progress from the group stages.
Academy graduate Cox was joined on the scoresheet by fellow flanker Jake Abbott (2), centre Sammy Tuitupou, wing Chris Pennell and replacement Greg King.
There is no point getting carried away with a 51-point victory margin, though, as the Spaniards were so far below Guinness Premiership standard, but the manner of victory can only boost confidence at Sixways.
With Friday’s trip to Montpellier representing Worcester’s last European foray of the season, it remains to be seen if fewer fixtures in the second half of the season will be a benefit or if the team will miss the confidence boost provided by previous seasons’ runs to the latter stages of the competition.
Despite the inferior standard of Madrid, Warriors contrived to fall behind in just the second minute as lock Graham Kitchener was lifted nowhere near the kick-off and the hosts infringed at the ensuing breakdown, allowing inside-centre Jeremias Palumbo to open his side’s account.
However, from that point on it was one-way traffic. With Marcel Garvey keen to prove a point after being dropped in recent weeks, the winger took just eight minutes to show his deadly turn of pace. As Madrid knocked-on, prop Matt Mullan slid and flicked the ball to Garvey, but there seemed little on as the speedster was behind his own 10-metre line.
However, he set off on an electric run, out-pacing several opponents, before floating a fine long pass to Alex Grove, who drew the last defender before sending fellow academy product Abbott sliding over in the corner. Jones put the seal on a fine score with a well-struck touch-line conversion.
Palumbo then missed a difficult penalty chance for the visitors, before Abbott threatened to double his tally with a burst to the line following an over-thrown line-out by the away side. His progress was just halted, though, and the young flanker was pinged for holding on.
Madrid scrum-half Pablo Feijoo received a talking to from referee Leighton Hodges for slapping the ball out of opposite number Ryan Powell’s hands.
From a scrum, Warriors went close before Powell went back on the angle to Tuitupou, who burst through several tacklers to score under the sticks. Jones added the extras.
Abbott did manage his second — and Warriors’ third — shortly before the interval. A Tuitupou pop-pass on half-way sent Scotland international Grove galloping into acres of space and he took the ball to within five yards before lofting it inside to Abbott, who slithered over. Again, Jones made no mistake with the conversion.
Worcester maintained their assault at the opening of the second-half with Jones’ probing grubber kick finding Tuitupou, who slid over the line, but was adjudged to have knocked-on in the process of touching down.
However, the hosts weren’t to be denied for long as number eight Cox dotted the ball down following a Warriors scrum in front of the posts, while Jones maintained his 100 per cent record with the simple kick.
Jones again brought the sparse Sixways crowd to its feet. Firstly, the Welsh stand-off weighted a kick nicely into the Madrid 22, which forced full-back Matias Tudela to slide into touch.
Warriors took a quick line-out and Jones found Pennell with a fine cross-kick which gave the winger a simple task of grabbing the fifth try. Jones blotted his copybook, though, by skewing the simple conversion wide.
Try number six wasn’t far behind as the beleagured Spaniards were put to the sword. Full-back Calum MacRae fired the ball out wide to the right where number eight Cox showed a great turn of pace to out-sprint the defence and touch down. Replacement fly-half Joe Carlisle slotted the conversion.
King was the next Warrior to waltz through as he had an easy run in from just outside the 22 to give Carlisle a simple conversion.
With Carlisle looking to try something flashy with nearly every touch of the ball, his outside-of-the-boot dink over the Madrid rearguard found Garvey, but the on-rushing winger couldn’t quite gather the ball at pace.
With the clock ticking down, man-of-the-match Cox put the seal on a fine individual performance with his hat-trick score, again showing good pace to charge in from 35 metres after Worcester had stolen line-out ball.
Carlisle slotted the extra points to round off an entirely one-sided, if irrelevant, victory for the Warriors.
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