WORCESTER Warriors have been drawn in pool B for the European Challenge Cup.

They will play home and away ties with Italian side Benetton and South African side Lions.

The revamped format places all 20 teams from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, France and South Africa into two pools, with each team placed in one of three tiers based on their performance in their respective leagues. 

The way the competition works is that teams in tier 1 and tier 3 will play home and away ties with two sides from the opposite pool, with their points being tallied up after four games to see who makes the knockout stages.

Tier 2, which Warriors are in, is a bit more simple. Each side will play home and away ties with two of the teams in the same tier, apart from teams in the same league. The other exception is that French and English sides can only play teams from the United Rugby Championship (don't honestly know why). 

So Newcastle Falcons, Stade Francais and Brive were the sides Steve Diamond's men could not have drawn.

So now it's a trip to Johannesburg to face the Lions and an Italian trip to Treviso to face Benetton.