WORCESTER Warriors will be given a rough ride by every side in this season’s Greene King IPA Championship, Moseley head coach Kevin Maggs has warned.

Moseley stifled Warriors’ dominant scrum, tackled bravely and finished Saturday’s match on the front foot as Dean Ryan’s men sealed a frustrating 23-7 victory at Sixways.

Ryan insists Warriors will not be taking any opponents lightly and Maggs admitted his Moseley players had raised their game for the Midlands derby.

“Everyone will look to take Warriors on and want to beat them and teams will relish welcoming them into the Championship,” said Maggs.

“The Warriors will learn this very quickly anyway. It’s not going to be an easy ride for Warriors — because everyone will raise their game for them.”

Scrum-half Charlie Mulchrone, who played in the Championship last season with Rotherham, marked his Warriors competitive home debut with a two-try display against Moseley.

Ryan said he had ‘full respect’ for every team in the Championship and is expecting a major battle for the top spots in the competition.

“I have full respect for every team in the Championship,” said former Wasps and Newcastle player Ryan.

“I have played in it and coached in it before and I was not surprised at all by Moseley’s display.

“That will be happening 22 times this year. I won’t be surprised next week or the week after because that’s the nature of the competition.

“It’s physical in a very different way to the Premiership. It’s not physical above the ground, it’s very physical and static and very different to what we know.

“On a cup final day, teams will be turning up against us and Bristol and anybody else who pushes themselves up the top for the rest of the year.”

Warriors dominated the scrum in Saturday’s match and Ryan admitted he had to try to work out how to translate the stranglehold into points.

“Our scrum was in the ascendancy and I did not understand why we had such a series of scrums when we were running at a million miles-an-hour towards the try line and got pulled back,” he said.

“I don’t understand why we were not allowed to play an advantage or be given a penalty try.

“You do not need three scrums before you give a penalty try.

“The game at this level struggles to get pace into it and then we get these types of issues which allow 10 to 20 minutes of the game to slip by.

“Perhaps a frustration with refereeing or that area of the law will be part of the next nine months.

“But there’s no point in making it a big issue.

“We have to work our way through it and understand how to win it.

“We have got to understand how to be there at the end.

“We have a dominant scrum and that’s quite clear – we have to work out how we get reward from it in this competition.”

Maggs said: “There’s lot of controversy around the scrum and a lot of the time it is down to the interpretation on the day.

“There are a lot of teams who always look for penalties in certain areas.

“It is always a difficult area for a referee to get hold of.”