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Sam Tuitupou: The Kiwi Pocket Rocket can fire up the Worcester Warriors campaign, both this year and next.

THERE must be something of a sense of deja vu for Warriors fans at present as they the club heads into the most critical part of its season.

Struggling against relegation from the sport's land of milk and honey is never nice and each year it must be even harder to take as private cries of here we go again' ring out.

March and the beginning of April could make or break Mike Ruddock side's season with four vital home clashes after this evening's trip to Edgeley Park.

The Guinness Premiership's top two, Leicester Tigers and Gloucester, visit Sixways at both ends of March with an even more important clash with basement side Leeds Carnegie sandwiched in betw-een.

After that comes their Eur-opean Challenge Cup quarter-final match with the French side Montpellier on April 5 as Worcester try to go on and secure a place in the highly lucrative Heineken Cup.

If Ruddock's men were to only pick up one win during that period then the emphasis must be placed on beating the Tykes.

It is always nice to be playing in Europe but the Prem-iership is the bread and butter and, with Worcester adding more star names to their squad, playing in National League One is unthinkable.

Leicester and Gloucester, the Premiership's versions of Real Madrid's Galacticos, would be great scalps, but defeat to the Yorkshiremen is almost unthinkable.

Ruddock rang out the old cliche at this week's press conference calling the remaining games "cup finals".

True enough, the last nine games are one-offs.

The Warriors chief is trying to instil a new brand of expansive rugby. Over the border they call it the "Welsh Way", no matter what its called when it works it has rugby fans on the edge of their seats.

Many coaches will say that get the performance right and the results will follow, that may be okay when you are up at the top, but when you're battling for every point that you can get to survive, the result must come before the performance - there are no points for playing pretty rugby.

The new Ruddock plan should be commended and when his masterplan falls into place then expect Gear, Lath-am, Tuitupou et al to fire them up the table next year.

For now, ensure survival and if they can win the Challenge Cup and earn that place in the Europe's premier competition next term Worcester can quite rightly look forward to the new campaign with plenty of optimism.

The Welshman guided his country to their first grand slam in 27 years in his second season. He transformed Wales from a team that were conceding 50 points to England's C' string side to the best in the Northern Hemisphere.

This term has been a learning curve for all at Sixways, but the next four home games well tell whether that arc will go up or do the unthinkable and go down.

9:15am Friday 29th February 2008

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