Paul Hull is urging his Bristol players to continue playing adventurous, attacking rugby – and believes it offers their only chance of Guinness Premiership survival.

Bristol Rugby ended their nine-match league losing streak in emphatic fashion yesterday, hammering Worcester Warriors 37-18 to give Hull his first win as head coach.

Tom Arscott, Junior Fatialofa, Mariano Sambucetti and Haydn Thomas all crossed, while Lee Robinson scored twice as Bristol bagged their first try-scoring bonus point of the season. The result leaves Bristol, who have three matches left to play, nine points behind Worcester, who have a game in hand.

Defeat yesterday would have confirmed Bristol's Premiership exit – but Hull has deliberately played down their involvement in a relegation battle with Worcester.

"We didn't really talk about that too much," said Hull, when asked if the threat of relegation had served as motivation for his players.

"Obviously it was there in the background, in the press and around the ground, but we just said, 'let's keep improving'. We knew that if we kept improving, the win wouldn't be too far away.

"We're going to keep the same tack going into the next game. Other teams have games in hand and we are behind, but the only way we can get out of this is to keep playing like that and carry on playing with confidence.

"If you go within yourself, you will stifle your attack, so all we can do is carry on playing the way we have been. These are the foundations for next season, whichever league we're in.

"All myself and John Brain have done is simplify the gameplan, given the players a little more license to express themselves in certain areas of the pitch and tried to widen our attack so we're not playing narrowly."

Two-try hero Robinson echoed his coach's views – although he worries that Bristol Rugby may have left it too late to claw their way out of trouble. He said: "The way the boys are playing, anything could happen. I just hope we keep winning and we'll see what happens.

"We're just going to keep playing as well as we can and see where it gets us. It may be too little, too late – but who knows?"