It’s probably stretching the point a little too far to describe Andy Goode as Worcester’s saviour but even though he didn’t play his finest game in last weekend’s play-off stutter against Bedford, while all around him fumbled and grumbled almost to the point of elimination the England fly-half was at least able to elevate himself when it mattered most.

Sixteen points, including a momentum swinging first half converted try, saw the experienced Goode breathe life into Warriors’ fading challenge and while he was not on the pitch when the redoubtable Blues were finally subdued, the fact Richard Hill’s men were within a score when Kai Horstmann and Joey Carlisle finished the job, was down in no small part to Goode’s sporadic excellence.

However, it is neither a defibrillator nor an ambulance Worcester need to take with them to Penzance next Wednesday – where they will meet Cornish Pirates in the first of their two-legged promotion play-off – as much as it is the breakdown service – and not only because of the 500-mile round trip.

After dragging his side through the last- four clash with Bedford, which was won 23-22 and still required the visitors’ Myles Dorrian to miss with a last-second drop goal and a television match official to rule the ball had gone dead before Duncan Taylor touched it down in goal, the talismanic play-maker launched a rocket across his team-mates’ bows.

Goode identified Warriors’ lack of discipline at rucks as one of the key factors that undermined their efforts last Sunday and could ultimately threaten their passage back to the Aviva Premiership.

“Breakdown assessment, interpretation of the ref and the laws is a really poor part of our game,” the former Sharks, Brive and Leicester man admitted. “The way the game is going now refs are always going to penalise the defensive team and the higher quality ref you get the more they’ll do it. That’s what they have been told to do from the top.

“The defensive team has to be whiter than white. You have to come in through the gate, roll away from the tackle and release the player on the ground. We are just giving dumb penalties away. We have been doing it all year and we are not learning our lessons.

“I will be saying a lot of stuff this week about how we can’t do that. If we get that right, defensively we have got no issues.

“We had issues earlier in the year with our press defence – we changed that a lot. But when we are whiter than white at the breakdown and our discipline is right we don’t have issues defensively. That’s what we have got to focus on.