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Given the facts Worcester have only once won their opening match of a Premiership season and have never been victorious at Welford Road, the first game of Dean Ryan’s reign was always unlikely to provide a surfeit of points.

In the end, perhaps predictably, it didn’t produce any as the energy provided by Warriors’ fresh beginning, new signings and the mercurial Josh Matavesi weren’t enough to fashion anything other than a decent second half showing.

Ryan is far more concerned with his work of club-building to be overly worried by his team’s multiple and varied short-term shortcomings, which were especially exposed in the first half by a Leicester team that functioned reasonably well even without Toby Flood, Ben Youngs and Manu Tuilagi.

Unfortunately, throughout that opening period new Worcester looked very much like old Worcester, committed and enthusiastic but limited when they had the ball. Which wasn’t that often.

“Twelve weeks training, everyone was trying to make a positive impact and we just shoved everybody into every breakdown to get positive - and we ended up sinking,” was Ryan’s assessment.

“We got caught behind the gain-line, gave penalties away and you end up feeling like you are drowning at Welford Road because you can’t get out of your 22.”

That situation improved considerably in the second stanza, as Matavesi and Semisi Taulava began to find gaps in the home rearguard but the jury remained out on the direction offered by first-time half-back pairing Ignacio Mieres and Jeremy Su’a.

“At half time I said ‘Let’s be a little bit more direct, play a little bit more field position, let’s take our over-exuberance out of the defence and stay detailed and we’ll get something out of it’.