DIRECTOR of rugby Gary Gold insists Worcester Warriors’ players will be going at it “hammer and tongs” for the remainder of the season.

The former Newcastle Falcons and Bath chief believes Warriors’ Aviva Premiership relegation battle with Bristol is far from over and is ramping up the intensity in training.

Warriors are seven points clear of basement boys Bristol with five matches remaining after a comprehensive 41-24 win over their rivals earlier this month.

But Bristol host an inconsistent Gloucester next, while Warriors travel to Coventry to tackle table-topping Wasps a week on Sunday (2.30pm).

“We won’t be taking our foot off the gas and there is quite a long week ahead with the game on Sunday,” said Gold.

“We will probably break things up a bit during the course of the week but I think we will use that to have an extra session.”

Gold reckons there is a “direct correlation” between Warriors’ poor performances on the field and their efforts on the training ground leading up to match-day.

“It seems in my short time here there is a direct correlation with the performance of the team by the way they train and I think that’s where the inconsistencies have been,” said Gold.

“I don’t think they have necessarily always trained well and when you are lingering at the bottom of a table there’s no real reason to believe you are then going to perform well at the weekend.

“You need the confidence of good training sessions and I was very happy with the ways the guys responded in the week of the Bristol game.

“We had a good training week with very hard graft. I was happy with the way they responded. They got on with the job and everything was about execution and they executed quite well.”

Warriors’ players were given a week off after a run of four successive Premiership matches.

They returned to Sixways this week with training sessions on Monday, Tuesday, yesterday and today.

“You are happy for the break but you always want to keep the continuity going,” said Gold.

“We are going at it hammer and tongs on the training field and the players will have this weekend off as a rest.

“We have set a benchmark in terms of how we can play but the problem is we have been inconsistent.

“We had a good performance against Saracens and then 50 good minutes against Exeter before we went missing.

“We were poor against Northampton and then good against Bristol so we need consistency, particularly going into the last five games.”