The success was such a boost to players and fans alike, with Twitter, Facebook and forum explosions. I've not seen so many positive Warrior's comments since we won the Championship final against Pirates.
The group stage was played in front of 12,000 fans at Kingsholm, in glorious sunshine and marked the launch of BT Sport, the final however was not so prestigious. The Rec, I am afraid to say, lives up to it's name, especially out of season. With only 3 of it's 4 stands in place and the Terrace being made up of composite parts and scaffolding, the ground did not reflect the beautiful surroundings.
With around 6,000 in the ground the cheerleaders and announcers had their work cut out to build the atmosphere and more importantly the volume, but once the action was underway the fans soon got into the mood.
First up on the night: Worcester Warriors vs Leicester Tigers.
In the build up to the final, 7's captain and England 7's player Richard de Carpentier declared in his interviews that we were no longer the underdogs, that would should be taken seriously and that we had something to prove. Big words and did just the job to excite the fans and build a level of expectation that, I am sure, swelled the numbers of travelling Warriors fans.
So with expectation high and even outside rugby fans such as @rugbyTON and @rugbystig suggesting we should be favourites the match night squad entered the stadium with high expectations:
01 Richard de Carpentier (c)
02 Cameron Goodhue
03 Andrew Boyce
04 James Stephenson
05 Paul Hodgson
06 Tom Chapman
07 Tiff Eden
08 Max Stelling
09 Rhys Owen
10 Ben Howard
11 Reece Chapman-Carry
12 George de Cothi
With only one change from last week, the enforced replacement of Josh Buggea with Warriors new boy Cameron Goodhue, the majority of the squad were heavily involved in getting us to the final and had been playing together for a couple of weeks.
The players took to the field and all the Warrior fans around us were excitedly cheering, shouting and and bashing the stupid TRY signs that double for a fan and fart sound generator.
We all knew that our key strength in the group games was our acceleration into the game, rapid response to the breakdown and breaking the defensive line over and over again, most teams didn't even get a score against us in the first half last week and more of this was on order.
A twitchy start followed with successive poor passes from Tiff Eden preventing James Stephenson the chance of an early pitch length run for a try. A few minutes later and Tigers convert the first try of the tournament. Slow start in comparison to last week but this is 7's rugby and there was plenty of time to get scoring. Unfortunately following some extremely odd refereeing decisions Tigers were the next on the score sheet, which was made even worse 20 seconds from half time when captain Rich DC was yellow carded for a "high tackle", at the time of writing this I am yet to see anything that tells me the tackle warranted a penalty, yet alone a yellow card.
The game restarted with a halftime score of 0-14 and with last weeks man of the round still in the bin Tigers took their chances and ran in to make it 0-21 and very uncomfortable for the Warriors. Eden seemingly finding it hard to reach his levels of last week was replaced, leaving us without a kicking specialist on the pitch.
At this point Max Stelling started his single handed mission to bring us back into the game with our first try of the evening, making the scores 5-21 with the conversion missed in relatively comedic style. Bouncing and buoyant the Warriors turned to face the Tigers restart which immediately alluded our defensive plans and resulted in a try, 5-28. A further try with 1 minute left on the clock sealing the result, Stelling tried his hardest again to level out the game, again scoring a try and this time kicking his own conversion.
Final score 12-35
Having opened the finals, as the newly crowned group winners and trophy hopefuls, against the team least expected to win, with a hammering it looked like it could be a long night for Warriors fans.
Following the games of Glaws vs Falcons, Tigers played Quins, the 3rd team in our final group. We were firm in the knowledge that we needed Quins to win this to stand any chance of getting to the final. At the start of the game all Tigers needed was a bonus point to prevent us form being able to get to the final.
In a very exciting game Tigers finish the victors, sealing their place in the final and relegating the Warriors vs Quins game to one of pride more than competition.
20:40 came and with nothing to play for both teams entered the pitch. From a Worcester point of view the first half was bit of a non event, from a fans point of view, standing at the end of the pitch we should have been attacking it was literally a non event and it ended 0-10.
With a defence leaking tries through the middle we started the second half in the same vein as the first and conceded a try giving Quins a 15-0 lead. In the past this is where I would expect to see a capitulation and clear signs of player saving themselves for the next game, but not with the new look Worcester.
A cracking try from new boy Tom Chapman, quickly followed by a try from Reece Chapman-Carry brought the scores to 14-15, the competition was back on, but on the downside, in completing the conversion, Tiff Eden slipped and hurt his ankle.
With the game in the balance and pride on the line our boys took the game to Quins and went for it, giving it everything they had to get the win. As sometimes happens in rugby, the harder you push for the victory the easier it is for your opponents counter attack. Unfortunately for our lads the harder they tried to score the bigger the gaps they left open and the game and competition was over.
Final score 14-29
I very disappointing end to our 7's series though our most successful JP Morgan 7's ever.
Why did we go into the evening on such a high and leave on such a low? It isn't because the other teams were any better than our group competition, proved by the fact Gloucester ran out eventual winners, no it was more to do with our mentality and ability to hit the pitch with nothing to prove and take the other teams by surprise. This was evident by the 'school boy' errors by the like of Tiff Eden in the first game against Tigers.
In the group stage we were underdogs, our players knew it, the other teams knew it and the commentators wouldn't stop saying it even when 20+ points up against Exeter or Bath. We were underdogs and the players used that to our advantage, we flew out of the blocks, seized the initiative and ran in points. There were no nerves as we had nothing to lose and fast flowing rugby was allowed by the officials. It could not have been more different in the finals.
In the finals we were the self proclaimed "former underdogs", we now had a target; winning, we now had pressure; expectation and we now had opposition that saw us as a threat and was not going to take it easy on us.
I cannot say that any of our lads had a bad game, the problem was that they did not achieve the highs set at Kingsholm, they did not have the best game we had ever seen them play, as they all came last week, they performed, battled ok at the break down, made some good off loads, made a handful of line breaks and defended most attacks ok.
Nothing about our game was exceptional.
Warrior of the Night: Max Stelling. The giant centre, playing like a forward in the break down and a winger in open play. Not only did he score half of our tries he converted one of them and put in sound solid tackles. A great prospect for the coming seasons.
Well done to the young lads, welcome to the new lads, you all did us proud and exceeded all of our pre-tournament expectations.
Welcome back Worcester Warriors, the 2013/14 season has started and it has, so far, been a ball.
