WORCESTER Warriors’ director of rugby Mike Ruddock says this season’s European Challenge Cup will give his players vital experience as they prepare for top level rugby.

Speaking after his side had run in nine tries against Petrarca, Ruddock said although they were upset at losing last season’s final against Bath at Gloucester, he believed they would need this year to build themselves into a side capable of challenging in the Heineken Cup.

“If I’m honest it would have been great to have been in the Heineken Cup this year, but when you see people like Charlie Fellows, Alex Grove and Matt Cox — youngsters coming in and doing so well — we know we’re still a year away from being where we want to be,” he said after the match.

“With such great young players coming in and bonding together with those we bloodied last year it gives us the chance to build ourselves up into a team that could do well at that level.

“With the new players coming through and experienced men such as Chris Latham, who I thought had a great performance in Italy, we hope to be ready for it if we can get there this year.”

Having seen teams they’ve beaten in this competition do well at the level above, such as Montauban who ran Munster so close on Friday night, Ruddock truly believes that the Warriors’ dream of playing at the top level of European rugby isn’t too far away.

“Having won our first EDF game as well, it gives us a lot to build on,” he said. “We used this competition last year to build success, momentum and confidence and we’ve got to do that again.

“We played some great rugby, moved the ball into space superbly at times and we scored some great tries.

“We started really well, we said we needed to come out of the blocks in top gear and not have to grind out a victory and that’s what we did.

“We scored some impressive tries early on and built our lead up but what really pleased myself and the backroom staff is that we didn’t let them score a try.

“We’ve done a lot of work on our defence and, although we weren’t really tested, it was important for us not to give any tries away as well.

“We possibly ran out of gas in the last 20 minutes and the intensity of the game was huge in terms of the work rate for everybody. We tried to run the ball wide so everybody was working hard in open play so perhaps we dropped off a bit towards the end.

“In fairness to Petrarca, they didn’t lie down and they came back at us and worked hard.

“They changed the game in the last stages to keep it tight so it worked better for them in the end in terms of damage limitation.

“Before the game I asked the boys to go and get us a result and they did that with some great rugby, some great moments and some great individual performances as well.

“Most of the tries were good handling efforts, two-on-ones, and we were able to put the ball into space and stretch their defence.

“You always want more as a coach but, in fairness to Petrarca, they made things difficult and hung in there. Overall it was a very professional job by us,” he said.