London Irish 42 Worcester Warriors 24 (From Worcester News)

London Irish 42 Worcester Warriors 24

6:40pm Sunday 9th October 2011 in Match Reports By Tom Guest, @tomguestWN #WENsport

WELL, Worcester Warriors have completed their first block of six games back in the Aviva Premiership and are now set to rest their front-line players as the LV= Cup gets under way.

Those half-dozen matches have been a real mixed bag, ranging from the depths of despair in the defeat to Gloucester at Kingsholm to the highs of wins over Sale Sharks and Northampton Saints on home soil.

Then there was yesterday’s curate’s egg of a match against London Irish at the Madejski Stadium.

Worcester went into the game with the league’s meanest defence, having conceded just six tries all season, so to ship four in 15 second-half minutes against Toby Booth’s run-at-all-costs Exiles was not what Richard Hill would have had in mind.

The Warriors chief put his side’s defensive horror show down to a ‘bad day at the office’, but the silver lining to the cloud that hung over Worcester’s performance was a much-improved attacking potency.

The Sixways outfit’s failure to cross the whitewash was becoming a concern, so Hill was delighted to see three tries as his side cut Irish to ribbons at times.

Andy Goode, Errie Claassens and Marcel Garvey all caused plenty of problems in the first-half with Irish barely able to lay a hand on the South African full-back.

Warriors’ cavalier attacking style merited something from the game but defensive ineptitude ensured they left empty-handed.

However, had Chris Jones had the werewithal to off-load to the supporting Ed Shervington on the stroke of half-time, Worcester would have been in the position to snatch a four-try bonus point when Garvey crossed in the last minute.

Without doubt, there have been plenty of highs and lows already in this embryonic season, but the bottom line is the league table reads: ‘Worcester P6, W2, D0, L4’, which suggests another season of scrapping against relegation.

However, is that a fair reflection of Worcester’s performances so far this term?

To my mind, the answer is no. The squad and coaching staff seem more united than I’ve seen before and there appears to be a much more coherent game-plan in place.

Warriors are languishing in the bottom three with more than a quarter of the league season gone but have already had more than their fair share of games when they have not had the rub of the green.

Having been 15-3 up at one stage against Harlequins, Warriors should arguably have at least a three in their win column and cases could be made for there to be several more in the bonus points section too.

All in all, there should be more cause for optimism than panic among their fans.