NEW signing Ezra Taylor managed less than two minutes of his Warriors debut before being struck down by a serious knee injury that is set to rule him out of action for the rest of the season.

The Samoan international number eight, 28, suffered the injury during Worcester’s 6-0 Aviva Premiership victory over Wasps at Adams Park when he was pinned under a line-out and sustained a suspected snapped patella tendon.

However, head coach Richard Hill is not planning to bring in a replacement for Taylor.

He said: “I don’t want to go into the market to try and find another back row. As you saw yesterday, that didn’t work out for us.

“We’ve got Adam Balding, Kai Horstmann and Neil Best all out at the moment, so we’ll have to hurry them up a little bit.

“Hopefully, one of those will be fit soon, but unfortunately none of them will be available for the Gloucester game on Saturday.

“After that, we’ve got a four-week break until our next league game, so we should be able to get one or two of them back fit by then.”

Taylor made a bright start to Warriors’ first away league success since the win at Gloucester in April 2009 with a power-packed carry from the kick-off, but seconds later he was hit by the cruel blow.

Hill added: “We think Ezra has snapped his patella tendon, which doesn’t sound very nice, and, two minutes into his Worcester career, it is probably his season gone.

“The jinx has continued with our back row — I don’t know what is causing it — and we are bitterly disappointed for him.

“The first carry he made was a good one and he was in the side to do some damage, but we had to replace him with Jake Abbott, who played very well but isn’t the same sort of ball-carrier as Ezra, after just two minutes.

“I’m going to be talking to our medical staff to make sure one of our other injured back-rowers is fit again pretty soon.

“We moved Matt Kvesic to number eight, but he isn’t really an eight — he’s a seven or possibly a six.

“We could have moved Chris Jones back there and brought Ben Gulliver on, but it was a bit early to change our second row combination.

“We had three sevens in the back row with Matt, Sam Betty and Jake and it was a good effort from all three of them, but we could have done with a bit more artillery to carry the ball.”