DIRECTOR of rugby Alan Solomons gave his players full marks after holding their nerve to steer Worcester Warriors to safety in the Gallagher Premiership.

Prior to their clash with Sale Sharks two weeks ago Warriors were just three points above the relegation zone and at real risk of the dreaded drop.

But Worcester responded by putting five tries past Sale in a 39-17 victory before defeating third-placed Gloucester 27-20 at Sixways on Sunday.

The back-to-back triumphs retained Warriors’ place in the top-flight and left bottom club Newcastle Falcons staring down the barrel at relegation to the Championship.

“The players must take enormous credit,” said Solomons whose side are 11 points clear of Falcons.

“I think our approach has been correct where we have focused on getting the performances out of the team.

“I do believe that we have got a quality team and when we perform well we give ourselves every prospect of getting the right result.

“I think that’s aided and abetted the situation but having said that full marks have got to go the players.

“I never mentioned once to the players about putting (relegation fears) to bed.

“They are highly intelligent young men and would have known exactly the situation.

“I just felt that if we had played really well and we were emotionally there the rest would hang together.”

Duncan Weir scored all of Warriors’ points in the first half including a 15th-minute try but scores from Henry Purdy and Willi Heinz put Gloucester 15-13 in front.

Niall Annett and Darren Barry then crashed over to give Worcester a 27-15 lead before battening down the hatches after Purdy’s 62nd-minute try to seal victory.

“It was a fantastic performance and a really brilliant defensive display as well from the lads,” Solomons said.

“Towards the end of the match when we needed to close it out was the one time when my heart was going a little bit quicker.

“I said to the lads at half-time that we are in an arm wrestle here and if we can just cut out the unforced errors or minimise them at least then we can build some pressure on them.

“I thought we were able to do that in the second half.”

Fly-half Danny Cipriani was causing Warriors heaps of problems in the first half but he was forced off with a hand issue on 57 minutes.

Influential scrum-half Heinz also left the field late on.

“Don’t get me wrong, I think they are terrific players,” Solomons said.

“But even when they were on I thought we could do it.

“I always talk about the performance and I felt during training early in the week that were weren’t quite there.

“We had a talk about that on Friday and practised much better from there.

“I think we got into the right emotional frame of mind and that’s the key for us.

“If we are in the right frame of mind emotionally then the lads will bring it.”

On the impact of Warriors’ supporters, Solomons added: “They were absolutely brilliant.

“I would like to thank all our staff in our commercial department for putting out the flags and I would like to thank the supporters too.

“Their support was incredible.”