HEAD coach Anthony Eddy described Worcester Warriors' excellent 34-25 victory over Northampton as: "Probably our best performance of the season."

Eddy was delighted with the all-round performance of his squad, but he was equally realistic when discussing the team's recent record of inconsistency.

"It's the story of our season, one good game followed by a not so good game," he said. "The players were frustrated by the performance last week and they thought they had a point to prove and to their credit they came out and did it today.

"I think the whole team is responsible for our performance, we were a lot more precise with our presentation and had greater urgency in the loose and at the tackle contest.

"It made things a lot easier for Matt Powell at scrum-half who provided great service for the backs. When you get the little things right it goes a long way to providing a good performance."

Eddy refused to be drawn on which of the two remaining competitions, the Premiership or the European Challenge Cup, would be the club's main priority for the remainder of the season but it's clear that the possibility of a place in next season's Heineken Cup is an attractive prospect.

"We've seen the Challenge Cup as a way into Europe all season and we've been focusing on it from the start," he said. "We knew we had a very good chance of getting to the knock-out stage if we concentrated on our group matches; so we did just that and now that we've beaten Northampton we'll be placing equal emphasis on winning the semi-final.

"What's really important though is that we now play more consistently in the Premiership as well.

"The players all understand the importance of getting off the roller-coaster and backing up good performances like this one with more good performances.

"We've been talking about that all week and hopefully it'll carry on into training this week and against London Irish on Saturday."

Northamton coach Paul Grayson was left to pick up the pieces. "I don't think we were very promising at any point. We showed flashes, but we have enough talent to always show flashes," said Grayson.

"Since the turn of the year, we have pretty much performed well every week. But we were a little bit flat on this occasion, and our performance got what it deserved.

"Worcester managed the breakdown area better than us. They got some quick ball, and I don't think we had any during the entire game."