Like most Worcester supporters, I travelled to Bath's Recreation Ground on Saturday hoping, nay expecting, to see a Warriors team freed from their tactical shackles and transformed into the rugby equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Even though Mike Ruddock has been saying all summer that he will not preside over Barbarians Mark II, something in me - born out of three years of watching Worcester play to a conservative, percentage-oriented and largely uninspiring game-plan - thought such public utterances were merely smoke and mirrors.

Surely Worcester would frolic around the open spaces, juggle the ball like a first-rate clown and score more tries in one game than they usually muster in half a season. How naive.

The clowns were on show but that's about all. My disappointment, not so much at the defeat as its manner, has only just passed and, in cold light, I am forced to admit most of it was self-inflicted.

Ruddock's pronouncements were not spin. Unlike me, the man who guided Wales to their first Grand Slam in 27 years and did so in a fashion true to his nation's greatest traditions, knew how difficult the transition would be.

I should have known. The starting line-up contained none of the heralded ball-players who have been added to the squad throughout the most exciting of summers. Indeed Rico Gear, Sam Tuitupou and Loki Crichton will not be around for more than a few weeks.

There were two debutants but they came from the Sixways academy and while Tom Wood performed credibly on the blindside, Chris Pennell had his hands full getting through his first Premiership game at full back.

The side was therefore, made up of players, used to bashing their way through brick walls and not finding their way round them.

It showed. Generally the handling was poor, unusually so. It seemed, in the first half especially, that every time Worcester made it into a promising position, they'd spill the ball.

They did that looking to off-load, something that rarely if ever happened last season.

Indeed, Worcester's attacking has been so simplistic since they graduated to the top flight that they have constantly struggled to score points.

The statistics must send a shiver down Ruddock's spine. In the last three seasons, Worcester have scored just 108 tries. Leicester, by comparison, have claimed 184 and Wasps 163.

Even Northampton, who were relegated last term and who have finished below the Warriors in two of the last three campaigns, have crossed opponents' lines on 123 occasions.

In the 66 Premiership games the club has played, they have secured just four tries bonuses and none of them came in 2006-7. Three of those came in the Anthony Eddy era, an 18-month period on which supporters look back with bemusement and anger.

The backline that started against Bath - Pennell, Thinus Delport, Dale Rasmussen, Gary Trueman and Marcel Garvey - have scored 17 times for Worcester in 153 games for the club: that's one in every nine.

Tactically, Worcester have been so narrow since they were promoted that Rasmussen, their outside centre for most of that period, averages two league tries a season and he's a very good player.

Even more worryingly, Garvey has scored just once, an interception effort in his second game, since leaving Gloucester. Of their 108 tries, 41 have come through the forwards or been awarded as penalty tries. The evidence just keeps stacking up.

It is clear, therefore, that anyone who thought the new regime would liberate a set of athletes who are all frustrated Fijian Sevens players, could not be more wrong. After all, recent history tells us that watching Worcester trying to score tries is an extremely trying exercise. Over to you, Mr Ruddock.