EUROPEAN CHALLENGE CUP: Worcester 29 Albi 0
Worcester Warriors director of rugby John Brain believes French outfit Albi will be intent on revenge when the two sides square up again next week following a bad-tempered encounter.
His team outplayed their understrength visitors and frustrations soon boiled over, resulting in a scuffle which saw Albi's Stephane Delpuech and Worcester's Aleki Lutui sin-binned late in the game.
And Brain is expecting another tough confrontation when they meet again in France on Saturday evening.
"They will field a different team and so will we but I'm sure, like most French sides, they will not want to lose at home, even though they have got no interest in the competition any more," he said. "I think their mentality will be to try and pay us back for what happened on Saturday."
Brain was reasonably pleased with his side's efforts, which saw them score five tries and concede none.
"The none conceded is another significant step forward in the defence," he said. "In attack, we looked cohesive and I think we could have scored more tries. I think our players are going forward far more than they were and they are making aggressive tackles behind the advantage line and putting the opposition on the back foot.
"We got broken a couple of times. In the first-half, we were on our own line for a few minutes but defended that pretty well and almost broke out of that and scored a try. We turned over a lot of ball but constructed some good attacking play as well."
The first try came after nine minutes when Shane Drahm's pass found blind-side flanker Will Bowley and he jinked his way through the defence to score.
And the second followed shortly after as Rasmussen picked out Mark Tucker on the left wing and he scampered home in the corner.
Drahm missed the conversion but Warriors increased their advantage after 25 minutes when flanker Tom Harding played a reverse pass to Morris and the former British Lions player showed a surprising turn of pace to dart home.
Warriors continued their domination into the second period and when Harding cut inside and went for the line, it looked they would get their fourth try. But Albi centre Kevin Boulogne came back from an off-side position to tackle and was sent to the sin-bin as a result.
As Worcester drove for the line, Albi continued to infringe and Italian referee Stefano Mancini awarded a penalty try.
Drahm converted to make it 24-0 but it wasn't long before Warriors were down to 14 men after Morris was sent to the cooler for handling in the ruck.
By the time the Welsh prop returned to the field, Tim Collier had been introduced to the action and the giant lock's catch-and drive 13 minutes from time set up a try for Aleki Lutui.
Neither side added to the scoreline after that and Worcester saw out their third consecutive win. They will face a stiffer test at the weekend but should be able to recall experienced players like Drew Hickey, Tony Windo and Chris Horsman.
WORCESTER: Brown; Delport, Rasmussen, Avramovic, Tucker (Lombard, 53); Drahm, M Powell (R Powell, 64); Morris, Fortey (Lutui, 51), Taumoepeau (Black, 64); Gillies, Murphy (Collier, 51); Bowley, Harding (Sanderson, 70), Horstmann.
ALBI: Prats; Fili, Subra, Devlin, Senio; Rees (Boulogne, 33), Williams; Larrouy (Delpuech, 46), Saby, Gainer (Viol 46); Santroni, Marechal; Ducos, Krzesinski, Hijar.
Referee: Stefano Mancini (Italy).
