FLANKER Ted Hill believes Worcester Warriors are showing “glimpses” of the “ferocity” they want to bring this season after taming Leicester Tigers at Sixways.

Warriors kicked off the new Gallagher Premiership campaign with a 24-16 victory over their Midlands rivals on Saturday.

Hill admitted a lack of accuracy let them down at times but was pleased with the pressure Warriors exerted on Tigers in the arm wrestle.

With the Rugby World Cup currently on in Japan Hill says Worcester are looking to replicate the pace of play and “ruthless attitude” carried out by national teams.

“You watch all these international games and they are played with a massive ferocity,” said the England back rower.

“The speed that they play at is ridiculous.

“We are trying to emulate that by putting teams under massive pressure.

“You have to have ferocity in everything you do so that’s our breakdowns, collisions, carries and mauls.

“Rugby is a physical game.

“We have to have a ruthless attitude with what we’re doing and we started to see glimpses of that ferocity on Saturday.

“We just need to be more accurate in what we’re doing. It can’t just be wild and a bit mad, we’ve got to know what we’re doing.”

Tigers hooker Tom Youngs opened the scoring with a try before Hill powered over inside the opening five minutes.

Wing Perry Humphreys also crossed for Warriors but Tigers kept coming back and led for the fourth time in the match when Tom Hardwick split the posts on 48 minutes.

However three Duncan Weir penalties were enough to secure an opening-day victory for the Sixways side.

“The win is the main thing,” Hill said.

“We take massive pride from playing at home so we wanted to take it to Leicester and I thought we did that.

“We are really pleased as we know how big that win was for us.

“I thought our accuracy let us down a little bit in the first half and slightly into the second, but I thought we were accurate with the ball in that last 20 minutes.

“When we had the ball we looked after it.”

Speaking before the game loosehead prop Ethan Waller insisted that Warriors needed to stop talking about being a potential top-six side and put “our money where our mouth” this term.

And Hill echoed Waller’s statement as Worcester now look ahead to Saturday’s trip to Northampton Saints (2pm).

“(Finishing in the top six) has been our goal for a while,” Hill said.

“We want to push on, so Ethan is 100 per cent right.

“We can’t talk about it anymore. We’ve got to show it in our actions and we started that off on Saturday.

“It’s a long, old competition and everyone that’s played in it knows that, so we have to get our heads down and move onto next week.

“Leicester are a big team and are well organised, so we always knew it was going to be a battle.

“This is our home, so we want to be strong here. But we now need to take that into our away performances and be consistent.”