DIRECTOR of rugby Dean Ryan criticised his forwards for going to sleep in Worcester Warriors’ hard-fought 39-26 victory against Yorkshire Carnegie at Sixways.

Warriors romped into a 19-0 lead after 17 minutes and looked to be cruising to a comfortable success in the Greene King IPA Championship.

But Carnegie’s forwards took control and they hit back to cut the deficit to just five points at the interval on Saturday.

Carnegie remained in the contest at 32-26 until Sam Betty crashed over for a converted try at the death.

Ryan said: “I think we went to sleep, especially up front.

“The first 20 minutes were outstanding but we lost momentum and couldn’t get it back.

“This game is great because it doesn’t allow you to drop off. You have to work every minute and we were guilty of not doing that.

“You can’t afford that to happen, especially up front.

“At 19-0, I was just waiting to see where the next try was coming from but we just went to sleep.

“They caused us a lot of problems at the scrum with a lot of weight coming up on the left-hand side around Nick Schonert.

“We couldn’t come up with a solution and ended up coming second best in that area.”

But Warriors showed potency in attack with Sam Smith, Sam Lewis, Gus Creevy, Max Stelling, Chris Pennell and Betty all crossing the whitewash.

Ryan said: “There’s frustration because I know how good we can be.

“We put 50 points on London Scottish and almost 40 on Yorkshire.

“I haven’t been critical of our forward pack in any other games but I am with this.

“I don’t think there will be an 80-minute performance where I would be happy but we can be more stable over 80 minutes to allow the things we do really well to come to the fore.”