Brad Davis has hailed World Cup winner Stephen Donald's impact on Bath, even though he has yet to make his Aviva Premiership debut.

New Zealander Donald will spearhead Bath's bid for Premiership points against Worcester at Sixways but the club's latest major signing has already proved his worth by playing a starring role when Bath kept their Heineken Cup hopes alive by narrowly defeating Montpellier last weekend.

Donald was heavily involved in creating both tries for the west country club, while his two successful penalty strikes ultimately proved decisive and Bath first-team coach Davis said: "All the attributes of what attracted us to Stephen Donald in the first place he showed in the way he commanded the team."

He added: "What Stephen brings to the team is that he plays at the advantage line, he comes onto the ball.

"We had a lot of numbers around the ball, a lot of players in motion, keeping the Montpellier defence guessing on where we were going to strike."

Donald features in an unchanged back division for his league debut, with former England skipper Lewis Moody captaining a team shorn of three hookers as Lee Mears, Pieter Dixon and Ross Batty are all injured.

Mark Lilley - normally a prop - will wear the number two shirt, with 19-year-old Will Tanner providing bench cover, while props Charlie Beech and Anthony Perenise take over from David Flatman and David Wilson respectively.

"Worcester are pretty hard to beat," Davis added. "We know they're going to be physical. We've just got to take their crowd out of the equation early on. We need to go there with a really tough mentality.

"The challenge is huge for us, especially since the competition is so tight. From third place to 10th there are just six points separating teams."