WORCESTER Warriors director of rugby Mike Ruddock was proud of his battling youngsters after they staged a second-half fightback against the Scarlets in the LV Cup.

Although the hosts gathered a bonus-point 32-17 win, the much-changed visitors refused to give in and out-scored the home team after the break.

Scarlets raced into a 32-3 lead after 50 minutes, but tries from Matt Cox and Graham Kitchener saw Worcester stand firm for the final 30 minutes.

Ruddock, who gave his side a half-time dressing down, said: “We won the second-half but the first-half we didn't win by a country mile — Scarlets won that and thoroughly deserved the win.

“They we rlets to move the ball into the open spaces and ask questions of the defence.

“If we didn’t match that desire to get around the ruck and get our line in place to actually defend then we would come unstuck —that is what happened.

“But it's a learning curve for some of these younger lads, there were some positives and the second-half was one of those. Ruddock added: “We got people like Olivier Sourgens back on the field, as he has been out quite a while with a knee injury, which was a positive.

“We also got young Matt Kvesic on the pitch at 17 years of age. He is a fantastic prospect and I don't want to build him up too much, but he certainly didn’t look out of place out there.

“I said to him after the game ‘what do you think?’ and he told me it was a little bit different to schoolboy rugby. I told him that is the way it is supposed to be.”

Ruddock also had words of encouragement for scrum-half Ollie Frost who endured a difficult full debut.

“You can go back and look at all manner of players who very often on their first start make a few errors,” said Ruddock.

“They learn from it and come back from it. Ollie made a few errors, but he is a good kid with a lot of character.

“He has a great desire to go on and be a great professional and he will look at the video, we will take him through a few things and he will improve,” added the Worcester chief.