JOHN Brain was happy to put the European Shield on the back burner for a while following the Rovigo rout.

Worcester's director of rugby saw his side put 11 tries past the part-timers to set up a quarter-final clash with another Italian outfit, Leonessa next month.

Before that, the Warriors get back to domestic duty and a Powergen Cup clash with London Irish on Saturday at Sixways.

"It's very important for us to win our home games," said Brain. "We need to get into that habit and we've performed well, apart from our match with Leicester, at Sixways all season.

"We certainly owe London Irish one and we play them twice in the space of three weeks. We'll be keen to ensure that they don't get into a winning mentality on this ground."

Brain was satisfied ultimately with the victory over Rovigo but wasn't too impressed with his players' first-half display.

"We were quite shaky first-half," he said.

"We weren't very happy with some of the aspects of the performance and I don't think the referee controlled the breakdown very well but we didn't help ourselves much.

"In the second-half, though, we sorted that out and it was pretty good.

"We built on what we did in the first leg. Our back line played very well in the second-half. It will be very good for them to put in a performance like that.

"Last week, we broke them down in the forwards and this weekend, the backs can take the plaudits.

"It wasn't difficult for the players to motivate themselves because many of them haven't played for a couple of weeks so they were itching for a game. A lot's been said about the meaning of the competition but rugby players just want to play games."