Kidney: 'I won't have a bad word said against the players'

London Irish director of rugby Declan Kidney was keen to focus on the positives despite seeing his side beaten 20-6 by Worcester after having a player sent off for the second away Gallagher Premiership match in succession.

Worcester fly-half Duncan Weir, who scored 13 of his side’s points, was on the receiving end of a head-high tackle from Motu Matu’u, which saw the hooker red-carded after only 34 minutes and left Irish to play the whole of the second half a man short.
Stephen Myler kicked two penalties for Irish but Worcester triumphed thanks to a try, conversion and two penalties from Weir, with replacement Jono Lance also on the scoresheet with a try and conversion.

Kidney said: “I saw the incident on the big screen and will need to look at it again and due process will take place afterwards.

“We put in a massive effort on either side of half-time and I won’t have a bad word said against the players because there was fantastic commitment from them as obviously losing players makes it extremely difficult.

“I think we could have had a penalty try at the end when their full-back was yellow-carded, but then again they had a try disallowed by the TMO in the early stages.”

Worcester director of rugby Alan Solomons accepted his side were not at their best but was content with a valuable four league points.

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“It was very important that we won and it was also important that we denied them a bonus point,” he said.

“However, our error count was far too high, so we couldn’t build any pressure and it can’t have been a pretty game to watch.

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“On balance, we deserved to win a very physical game of rugby, but sometimes things don’t work out and it’s hard to explain why.

“To be a top-six side, we need to be better than that, but against Sale and Exeter we showed we could be. But it’s a very strong competition and there are no easy games in it.”

Next up for Worcester is a trip to Saracens next weekend.

“We need to be a hell of a lot better than we showed today as they are the best team in Europe,” added Solomons.

RugbyPass had the pleasure of interviewing Ireland and Lions star David Wallace.