ALAN Solomons insists the factors that led to Warriors collapsing in last week’s European decider are “in hand”.

The Sixways chief has reviewed the action from a 33-27 defeat at home to Castres, the French side that had not won on English soil since 2001 prior to last Friday.

A strong Warriors line up had led 27-12 and looked likely to bag the all-important fourth try and victory that would have seen them through European Challenge Cup Pool One.

However, Rory Kockott helped inspire the visitors to rediscover their resolute streak to leave chunks of the home support perplexed ahead of Saturday's return to Premiership action at home to Wasps (3pm).

“Having a close look at the footage, the game really changed when we had the two mauls close to their line around the 50th minute,” explained Solomons.

“We went okay in the first one and got a penalty. They got a penalty from the second, kicked to the 10-metre line and mauled us into our half.

“Once they realised they were getting traction on their driving maul they used it. That was the key factor in the momentum swing.

“We had been on their line but they drove us into our half and scored from that.

“Another one they had on their 10-metre line, they drove us into our half, got a penalty, kicked into the 22, got another penalty, drove us five metres from our line, there was a yellow card and a penalty and they eventually went over.

“They scored two tries against 14 men and on the day we were unable to deal with it.

“We have taken it in hand, Rory (Duncan, head coach) has spoken to the players and we have gone through it in the review and practice.

“We will deal with it, we were just caught a little bit by surprise on the day I suppose.

“In the first half they moved the ball and never mauled. They tried to move the ball a lot and got nowhere.

“In the second half they stumbled on to it because they had the one driving maul that really worked for them and having got traction from that they had another three from which they got big advantages.

“At 27-12 we should have won the game but that was where it turned, that played a major part in our inability to stem the momentum and errors compounded that situation.”

The defeat saw Worcester finish third in the group having gone into the final match within a bonus-point victory of qualifying as the best runner-up.

“It was a bit of a mixed bag,” added Solomons of the European campaign.

“We played well in parts and in other parts we perhaps did not perform that well.”