WORCESTER Warriors director of rugby Gary Gold admits he cannot ignore the significance of Sunday’s Aviva Premiership crunch game against basement side Bristol at Sixways (kick-off 3pm).
Gold has called on his players to ‘polish the edges’, as they go in search of a win which would keep their Premiership status in their own hands with five games remaining and avenge a dismal 28-20 Boxing Day defeat to their West Country opponents.
Bristol closed the gap on Warriors to just two points after picking up their third Premiership win of the campaign, in a shock 12-11 victory over Bath at Ashton Gate last weekend.
The Worcester chief, meanwhile, saw his side suffer a 24-14 loss at Northampton Saints, but remains upbeat ahead of a ‘massive’ clash against Bristol.
“As I said when I joined a month ago, all I can ask for from the players is to stay in the battle and work extremely hard,” said Gold. “Bristol is a massive game. We take each match as it comes, but obviously the relevance of the game is crucial. We’re very much looking forward to it.
“We just need to polish the edges a little bit and be a lot more clinical in the things we’re doing. Northampton have a very good forward pack and when they entered our 22, we neutralised them very well and stopped them from exerting much pressure.
“We turned the ball over a few times and were able to stop their drives very efficiently, but there are certainly areas of improvement for us.
“If you get opportunities against good rugby teams then you have to take them and unfortunately we didn’t take them against Northampton. The late try made it slightly more respectable on the scoreboard and showed the fight these guys are up for though.
“We need to be more clinical in our execution and that’s one of the learning curves for this group.”