Banbury Bulls coach Grant Holmes pulled no punches after his side lost 20-17 to Worcester Wanderers in Midlands 1 West.

Holmes said: “To be blunt, I put our poor start down to the player’s lack of commitment to put in the hard work at training.

“We are a Midlands 1 team which makes it imperative to train twice a week if we want to have any hope of clawing our way up the table to safety.

“But this week we had just 12 first-team players at training, so we were unable to put a proper team run together.”