WORCESTER Warriors chief Gary Gold believes his players can be “proud” of their performance despite losing 28-23 to Leicester Tigers.

Freddie Burns stole the show at a packed-out Sixways as he finished with a 23-point haul to secure Tigers’ place in the Aviva Premiership play-offs.

But Gold was pleased to see his team go “toe-to-toe” with their high-flying opponents on the final day of the season.

Chris Pennell, Bryce Heem and Wynand Olivier crossed the whitewash as 11th-placed Warriors collected a losing bonus point.

“We definitely could have won the game,” Gold said. “But we didn’t so the next best prize was to put up a performance we could be proud of.

“I am never going to celebrate losing a game of rugby. I don’t think that should be a mindset we should become accustomed to.

“But from where we have come from and where we are as a group we needed a really strong performance and we got that.

“That was a top-four team who have also had a good turnaround but we went toe-to-toe with them.”

Warriors led 18-16 at the start of the second period after Heem pounced on a mistake from Matthew Tait and stormed over.

But nine unanswered points from the boot of Burns turned the tide in Tigers’ favour as Worcester’s penalty count rose.

Gold admitted he was frustrated with “silly errors” as Ryan Mills’ kicking out of hand faltered and Warriors struggled in the set-piece.

“There are clearly things we need to do better,” said Gold who took over the reins at Warriors in late January.

“Our set-piece needs to improve and we made silly errors as we kicked the ball directly out into touch.

"You cannot have two or three of those in a game against a team like Leicester as you will pay the price.

“But we knocked at the door for the last five to seven minutes to give ourselves a chance of at least drawing level.

“That is all we can ask for and that’s how we set out from the beginning of my time here. I think the guys really came to the party.”

Leicester head coach Matt O’Connor praised his side’s “perfect” execution at the line-out as they caused Warriors problems.

“Worcester under Gary have been very committed and we knew we were going to have to work really hard,” O’Connor added.

“It was probably a good dress rehearsal going into our semi-final (at Wasps). We had to make sure we were accurate and I thought our game management was very good.

“We scrummaged really well, our line-out drive was good and we put ourselves in the right areas to win the game.”