Luatua credits ‘23-man effort’ for Sixways fightback

The Bears trailed 13-10 at half time despite Ed Holmes’ early score, before tries from Dan Thomas, Andy Uren, Siale Piutau and Ben Earl earned maximum points on the road.

And captain Luatua applauded the replacements for ‘finishing the job’ during a physical encounter.

'Glimpses of the real Bears'

“We’re very pleased to get back on the winning tracks,” he said. “It wasn’t pretty at times, but we stuck to our systems, which is a bit of a cliché, but we showed we can put points on, and we can defend well.

“We spoke at half time about us ‘playing like poos’, but we said ‘we’ll flush it’, as a mental stance, reset and we came back in the second half and played the Bristol brand of rugby that we’re growing accustom to and everyone is wanting to see.

'Replacements made an impact'

“We came out with the intention to start really well, and we know Worcester always have a good opening 20 minutes, but lucky for us, week in week out, every time we name a 23, the bench come on and finish the job.

“Credit to the whole squad, everyone that prepared us, it takes 23 men to go out there and do the job and it did today.

“Ben (Earl), Piers (O’Conor), (Harry) Thacker, everyone off the bench, (Jake) Woolmore playing 60 minutes. It looked at times, like the Bristol we’ve grown accustom to.”