Richards hails set-piece improvement
Sonatane Takulua scored all of his side’s points in a man-of-the-match performance which included a 77th-minute try, but Richards was keen to spread the plaudits after a seventh home league win of the season.
He said: “Tane is a class act, but the whole team deserves some credit.
“When you look at how our line-out capitulated at Leicester in our last game, I thought they came back and were outstanding tonight. Worcester couldn’t get that base from their line-out to attack from, Sean Robinson and Scott Lawson made a difference and we took that platform away from Worcester.
“It’s a hard day at the office when you don’t have it, as we know ourselves, and when Worcester had those chances we just didn’t allow them to execute properly.”
Richards added: “We weren’t at our best in some respects.
“Worcester didn’t come up here with anything we weren’t expecting, we prepared well but we conceded points when our captain was in the sin bin. Other than that I thought we were quite comfortable defensively, and didn’t feel too threatened.”
Refusing to take the bait when asked about the high penalty count against Friday’s visitors, Richards replied: “A referee will make three or four times more decisions per game than any player, and they’re under a huge amount of pressure.
“They’re human, and to be fair I didn’t think Greg Garner was too bad tonight.”
Insisting his side’s season still has life with a European Champions Cup play-off up for grabs, he added: “We can still finish seventh, and that’s what the goal is.
“We’ll go down to Bristol next Saturday with a view to winning the game, and we’ll see what happens. But Bristol are a side who are at their most dangerous now, with absolutely nothing to lose. We expect them to come out and play, they’ll be unpredictable and we know it won’t be easy.”
