“SOFT moments” were Worcester Warriors’ undoing as Saracens claimed a 38-22 victory at Sixways to progress to the Premiership Cup final.

That was the verdict of director of rugby Alan Solomons who saw his side fall 18-3 behind at half-time despite dominating possession and territory in the opening period.

Tom Whiteley pounced on mistakes by Scott van Breda and Darren Barry to score the opening try on six minutes.

Rotimi Segun then dotted down in the corner before Alex Lozowski landed two penalties as the visitors punished Worcester for their errors.

Lozowski completed an 18-point haul after the break as he dispatched two more three-pointers and converted tries from Max Malins and Sione Vailanu to secure an emphatic win.

“If we look back and analyse the tries the bulk of them were soft,” Solomons said.

“The first one came off an error as it was an attempted grubber, bounced off the guy’s hands, we then tried to retrieve the ball, it went loose and they scored.

“For the second one they got away down the right-hand touched line and did very well to score.

“But at 18-3 down we said it was not impossible to come back.”

A van Breda penalty on the stroke of half-time was all Worcester had to show for their first-half efforts.

But Solomons continued: “One has always got to give credit to the opposition.

“They defended really well, particularly in that first half, as we were unable to breach that defence.

“I thought Saracens had the edge physically but I didn’t think that was the case in the second half. I thought we did raise our level.”

Nick David notched Warriors’ first try before Tom Howe went over to get his side within eight points of Sarries.

Solomons admitted Malins’ try two minutes after Howe’s score made it “difficult for us” as Vailanu then crossed for Sarries’ fourth.

But Warriors’ chief was pleased with their second-half display as Howe bagged his second in the dying moments.

“There were what I would call soft moments when we gave away points and that’s the big lesson to be learned from this game,” Solomons said.

“The effort they put in was tremendous and I thought our second-half performance was better than the first.

“In a sense we were able to translate pressure into points and I thought the physicality was a bit different.

“They had to defend a lot in that first half and they defended very well but that takes it out of you and I certainly thought in the second half the physicality was different and we played well.”

Academy coach Adam Powell was thrilled to see his Saracens team set up a home final against either Northampton Saints or Newcastle Falcons next month.

“We are really proud of the boys,” Powell added.

“We came here with a really simple game-plan based around massive work ethic, high standard of physicality and just being together as a group and putting them under pressure.

“I thought we did that and the tries we scored ultimately came from us putting them under pressure and I thought we controlled large parts of the game against a very good team.

“They are good at holding onto the ball but I do think possession stats can be misleading.

“We felt our defence was in control, we played in the right areas of the pitch and got the rewards from that.”