WORCESTER Warriors captain Ted Hill produced one of his best performances in a Worcester shirt on Saturday in the narrow 17-18 defeat by Leicester Tigers.

Hill, 22, further confirmed his ability to beast his way through defenders when scoring a brilliant solo try in the first-half and went so close to getting another late on but for a try saving tackle from Tigers' Dan Cole.

From the game, Hill ran the second-most metres by a Worcester player, 45 metres, on 9 carries. He also had the joint second most defenders beaten of any player on the pitch with four and in general was a physical presence all over the pitch.

Head coach Jonathan Thomas was full of praise for his captain after the game and insists Hill deserves to be included in the England squad this summer.

“Without a shadow of a doubt he should be,” he said.

“Ted has been phenomenal, for such a young man, the maturity shown in such difficult circumstances.

“I can’t speak highly enough of him but he was fantastic today, so physical, really dominated the ball on all aspects.

“If I was the coach, I would definitely include him.”

In 2018 Hill was included in England's autumn test squad and made his full debut against Japan at Twickenham.

Despite often being included in Eddie Jones' squads, most recently the 2021 Six Nations, he has yet to make another appearance for his country.

There is certainly no shortage of back-row players in England and Hill could have had more caps for his country had it not been for the likes of Tom Curry, Ben Earl, Maro Itoje, Sam Underhill, Jack Willis... the list goes on.

But Jones has held positive discussions with Hill in previous months, asking him to have more 'key impacts' in games for his club, which he certainly did on Saturday.

"That's exactly what he has asked of me, get my hands on the ball and by the physical player he knows I can be," said Hill.

"I just want to keep working on that, I am by no means the finished article and I just want to keep better and better."

"It's miserable at the moment, results aren't going our way but I'm just trying to enjoy my rugby and keep learning."