DIRECTOR of rugby Dean Ryan admitted his players were given a “wake up call” on Saturday as they struggled to hit top gear against a resilient Moseley side at Sixways.
Worcester Warriors clinched a 23-7 victory over their local rivals thanks to two tries from scrum half Charlie Mulchrone who also set up Ravai Fatiaki’s try late on.
But Ryan said he was left frustrated as his players were unable to turn pressure into points, which the Warriors boss believed was down to “naivety”.
“The Championship is a tough struggle and a unique challenge. so today was a wake up call about what it was,” Ryan said.
“Although we won, the nature of the win was not convincing enough for us to just say ‘let’s move on’.
“If you look at how many balls we put down, I think we just thought we could just play through them and win, but we needed to be patient.
“There is a lot of frustration because we knew we would dominate the game and we knew we would win it, but we couldn’t find that next level of performance.”
Ryan insisted he was not surprised by the performance of Moseley as he said all of their league opponents would treat their match against Warriors as a “cup final”.
“The whole nine months is going to be the same,” he added. “It is going to be tough and we will get frustrated. but welcome to the Championship as that’s the nature of it and we have got to fight our way through it.”