WORCESTER Rugby Club have defended themselves after coming under fire from ticket-hungry supporters.

Saturday's match between the league leaders and Coventry attracted 5,068 fans -- the biggest crowd of the season -- and, with 30 minutes to go before kick off, it was obvious to supporters that not enough tickets were on sale.

Large queues built up and many fans got into the match late as club officials printed more tickets and then accepted money on the gate to get people in.

One supporter said: "We eventually got in at about 3.10pm having missed 10 minutes. Having initially massively underestimated what the crowd size would be, the club then failed to respond to the situation, even though it was apparent well before kick-off that the one ticket office was overwhelmed."

Operations director Mike Robins, however, said the club did everything they could once officials knew there weren't going to be enough tickets on sale.

"Our average gate is around 2,500," he said. "It's simply not practical to print out 5,000 plus tickets for every match, taking into account that average figure.

"Obviously we knew that over Christmas there was going to be more demand but I don't think in our wildest dreams that we thought it was going to be a sell out, which it was near enough.

"We had 4,000 tickets on sale initially and once we realised that was not going to be enough we printed more. However, as the queues built up, we just took the money so we could get everybody in. I don't think anyone missed any more than 10 minutes.

"Supporters are notoriously late in arriving for games. We would love them to get here a bit earlier."