HEAD coach Rory Duncan praised his Worcester Warriors’ side’s composure after Ryan Mills’ drop goal clinched a last-gasp 20-18 victory at Ospreys.

The dramatic triumph also secured Warriors’ place in the quarter-finals of the European Challenge Cup for the first time in 10 years.

It looked like Pool Two leaders Worcester had missed their chance to seal a last-eight spot when Sam Davies slotted home a 75th minute penalty.

But with eight seconds remaining Mills dropped into the pocket, collected Michael Heaney’s pass and sent the ball between the posts.

“It was a rather stressful last couple of minutes but the guys kept their composure really well and managed the game correctly,” Duncan said.

“With about four minutes to go we had a ball down in our 22 we didn’t try to play out of our half.

“The guys kicked the contestables, had confidence in the system and obviously ended up with the benefits and the rewards in the end.”

On Mills’ drop goal, Duncan said: “I had a chat to Millsy after the game and apparently when he did the drop goal it caught one of their player’s hands.

“He said it almost drifted outside the pool but came back in so it was nice to have a bit of good fortune on.”

Warriors opened the scoring with a converted try through Jonny Arr on 10 minutes after Darren Barry pounced on Luke Price’s pass.

But Ospreys hit back with an intercept score of their own through Keelan Giles before Olly Cracknell went over to give the hosts a 15-7 lead at half-time.

Despite the deficit Duncan said his players had a “good feeling” at the interval and was delighted with their response.

Ollie Lawrence crossed on 48 minutes before Dean Hammond dotted down while George North was in the sin-bin. Mills then held his nerve at the death to clinch victory.

“We just wanted to be clinical in hand with ball in hand,” Duncan said.

“Obviously there was a lot of kicking in the game.

“We spoke about really pushing hard in the chase lines as we wanted to win that kick game and place them under a bit of pressure.

“They had contested our breakdowns in the first half quite heavily so we wanted to really slow their ball down.

“Those were the key messages sent on going into the second half.

“But the guys had a good feeling about the game.

“They felt they could get on top of them. We just needed to eradicate the errors.”

Ospreys head coach Allen Clarke admitted the defeat was a "blow" to their qualification hopes.

“Our execution and accuracy wasn’t good enough in the second-half," Clarke said. 

"We were a little bit flat and we didn’t take our opportunities.

“Our set-piece was untidy and we weren’t owning the gain-line which meant we couldn’t put them under pressure.

"There was definitely a degree of kick tennis.

“If you look at the kicking battle on the whole then we probably came out on the right side of it.

"The kick tennis came when George North was off as we wanted to win some field position.

“The majority of the time it was the right thing to do against a defence like that particularly when you are down to 14 men.

"In the context of this competition it’s a blow but not to our season as a whole.”