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Cockerill: Tigers must improve

Image: Richard Cockerill: Mindset needs to be better

Leicester boss Richard Cockerill insists his side needs to improve despite making a perfect start to their season.

We put ourselves under pressure says Leicester boss

Leicester boss Richard Cockerill insists his side needs to improve despite kicking off their season with back-to-back bonus-point wins. Speaking after the Saturday's 34-26 victory over Worcester Warriors at Welford Road, Cockerill said he was happy with his side's start but believes they can do better. "It's a perfect start if you look at the table," said the Tigers director of rugby. "But it was far from perfect performance-wise. But we will take the points. "We did some really good things and we are creating a huge amount of opportunities but we also turned the ball over too much. We just played ourselves into trouble. "It's easily fixed but our mindset needs to be better than that. Every time we recycled the ball properly there were opportunities for us. "But we were sloppy at times and put ourselves under pressure and that cost us points. We need to be better than that.

Criticism

"Worcester made us work hard but we should have played better and been more accurate. "With the dominance we had in the game, the five tries was a poor return and we need to tighten things up." Cockerill singled out England centre Manu Tuilagi, who scored two of Leicester's five tries, with both coming in the opening 12 minutes. "Manu has had some criticism but within our structure he plays really well and gets opportunities to run with the ball," he said. "You saw today his raw power and his ability to make something from nothing. He is still very young but me and (head coach) Matt O'Connor think he will be the best 13 in world rugby in the next 12 months." Worcester have picked up just one point from their opening two games and played 20 minutes today with just 14 men after losing full-back Chris Pennell and scrum-half Shaun Perry to the sin bin.
Battled
The Warriors scored tries through David Lemi and Alex Grove, with former Leicester fly-half Andy Goode kicking 16 points. Warriors head coach Richard Hill said he was disappointed with the result but stressed he is pleased with the progress Worcester are making. "It was a huge effort on our part today and I can see something building nicely," he said. "We are bitterly disappointed with the loss. "The players are already talking about next weekend because the signs are there and things are better than last season. "We had the worst possible start being 14-3 down after 12 minutes. We had the ball but they scored two great tries. "You wouldn't expect to lose tries from that distance and it put us on the back foot. We lost Chris Pennell and Shaun Perry to the sin bin but we showed great character in the way we battled back."

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