Hartpury "absolutely deserved" win over Worcester Warriors

Warriors took the lead early through Austin Wallis, but a crushing first-half display saw Hartpury stride into the break with a 14-28 advantage.

Warriors brought it closer in the second half but left it too late as the visitors claimed a 28-34 victory, leaving Warriors with their fourth-straight defeat and confirming the home-and-away double for Hartpury.

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"Disappointed," Everard told Worcester News after the final whistle. "We speak about being hard to beat and I don’t think we were that today, particularly in the first half.

"Hartpury were brilliant and they absolutely deserved the result. Yeah, disappointed."

On what went wrong, the coach explained: "There were too many rucks in our half, too many set pieces in our half and then the set piece obviously didn’t function very well in the first half.

"We just compounded pressure upon pressure in the ruck and the set piece which heaped pressure on us, they ended up in our 22 too consistently in that first half.

"I think it’s the pressure that Hartpury put on us and then probably our own accuracy let us down.

"A team like that, they came away with the points. We tried to tidy that up and we were better in the second half but we left it too late."

While feeling it was too little, too late, Everard felt the performance was much improved in the second half.

"I think we were more efficient out of our half, I think the set piece went from being second best to actually having dominance which gave us a foothold into the game," he explained.

After an impressive showing against Ealing Trailfinders, ahead of the break period, the coach added he will need to reflect on why a 'really good' period of training didn't translate on the field.

"I believed we had a really good couple of weeks, our training methodology in those two weeks, I was really pleased with," he said. "We need to have a little reflection as a group and as a coaching team – why didn’t we get the transfer from that into today?"

Warriors have held on to their third-placed position following round 14, with Hartpury nearing the gap to just two points in fourth.

"I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – it’s never going to be a straight line with where we’re at," added Everard. "We will endeavour to get there with the people we have and the effort we put in on a daily basis."