DIRECTOR of rugby Dean Ryan believes complacency will be one of the biggest obstacles to Worcester Warriors securing an immediate return to the Aviva Premiership.
Warriors are likely to be heavy favourites for the Greene King IPA Championship title and Ryan said his side was shaping up well.
However, the Warriors’ boss said they will need to make sure they are at the top of their game when the season gets underway next month.
Worcester will kick-off their pre-season campaign against Ospreys on Friday night before facing Sale Sharks and Exeter Chiefs and Ryan believed the fixtures would leave them perfectly poised ahead of their assault on the title.
“Being in the Championship is going to be a diverse challenge as the consistency of opposition will not be the same as the Premiership so we were delighted to face three European sides,” he said.
“It will help us to set the bar a little bit because we are going to have to internally run our own standards to make sure we keep improving in the competition which does not provide that consistent stimulus.”
Sam Smith, Tom Biggs and Gerrit-Jan Van Velze were among a number of new faces to arrive in the summer after Ryan got rid of a large bulk his squad from last season.
But the former England international said he has been impressed by how well his players have gelled since their return to training.
“We have had so many changes and the dynamics of bringing a group together was our first challenge, but that is what I am most pleased about,” Ryan said,
“It has been well publicised about the people we are bringing here. For the likes of Van Velze to sit in the middle of our business and be an influential figure or for the likes of Sam Smith and Ryan Mills to be the front line choices is a recurring theme throughout the squad and that will be central to us being successful.
“We have not played yet so we have got a lot of those cohesive challenges still to face, but we are in a pretty strong position as a group given the amount of disruption.”
