IF Worcester end up losing their battle to avoid relegation from the Premiership - the last weekend in February will be regarded as a defining mom-ent in their season.

While their two closest rivals both picked up victories, John Brain's side lost a game they really should have won and were even denied a bonus point in injury-time.

They deserved better after a performance as enterprising as any they have produced in recent months. It was a major improvement on their lack-lustre showing against Leices-ter seven days ago but it may well prove too little, too late.

Warriors started the day believing a win could take them off the foot of the table, but those hopes were scotched before they even took the field when news came through that Northampton had beaten Lei-cester 10-9.

With Newcastle claiming a win against Wasps the previous night, Warriors knew anything less than victory would leave them cut adrift at the bottom of the table.

While they were without prop Chris Horsman due to his involvement for Wales in the Six Nations, the visitors were boosted by the return of Tony Windo to the front row following his recovery from injury.

It was a bright start for the visitors and they attacked Gloucester from the kick-off. That early pressure paid off when they won a line-out on halfway and drove forward, allowing James Brown to slot a drop goal.

Brown doubled his side's ad-vantage with a penalty on eight minutes and would have scored a try but for a superb last-ditch tackle from scrum-half Peter Richards.

The Worcester fly-half's after-noon took a turn for the worse when his kick was charged down and flanker Peter Bux-ton pounced for a facile try.

Ryan Lamb added the conversion and the stand-off began to make his mark with a pair of penalties and some pin-point kicking out of hand.

One of those efforts was cancelled out by a Brown three-pointer, and, with the half drawing to a close, Worcester were celebrating what they thought was a try when Thinus Delport crashed over after Dale Rasmussen's break.

But his effort was disallowed by the touch judge, apparently for having a foot in touch as he grounded the ball.

Worcester survived one more scare before the break when Lee Best's kick was charged down by Mark Foster but Matt Powell got back to save the full-back's blushes.

The intensity increased after the interval and Worcester lock Craig Gillies set the tone with the first of two line-out steals. Even so, it was Glou-cester who put the first points on the board, when Warriors lost possession and Fos-ter sprinted home unopposed.

Gloucester looked like scoring a second shortly after but Rasmussen - who produced yet another outstanding performance at outside centre -wrapped up James Simpson-Daniel as he threatened to counter-attack.

Worcester's only try of the game came on 55 minutes. Gary Trueman played a rev-erse pass to Powell, who broke through the Gloucester def-ence to set up Best to score.

Brown's conversion put the visitors within four points and a penalty with six minutes of the game remaining made it one. But two Ludovic Mercier penalties put the game beyond Worcester and a late James Bailey try finished the job.

Warriors: Best; Havili, Rasmussen, Trueman (Tucker), Delport; Brown, M Powell; Windo (Black), C Fortey (Lutui), Taumoepeau, Gillies, Collier (Murphy), Sanderson, Harding (Quinnell), Horstmann. Attendance: 12,500.