I WANT to be in the top six of the Aviva Premiership by Christmas and that has to be our objective.

It’s never really been a discussion between us as every player in every team wants to be playing in the Heineken Cup.

We don’t really need to speak about it, because that desire is underlying beneath the squad. If you can win your home games and pick up a few victories on the road, you’ll be right up there. We will just keep going towards that.

We now have Exeter away on Saturday, which will be tough, but they are beatable and we can do a job.

This will be a big week as we focus on that game and we can take the good stuff out of Friday’s 23-16 win over Sale at Sixways.

The line-out needs to be brushed up a little bit as I’m sure Exeter will target us there.

Against Sale, it was quite windy and the line-out for both sides didn’t function that well.

We knew it was going to be a tough game with Sale and they threw everything at us, but we’re happy with the win and we’re on our way back up the league.

I said before the game that we were going to win — we had to — and that’s the attitude we will carry on with throughout the season.

Those two late defeats early in the season will stick with me for the rest of the campaign, but you have to win your home games and we keep drumming that into the players.

Sixways is a tough place to come — I played against Worcester here for years and the crowd is loud and it’s not a nice ground to come to and play as an away team.

There are a number of new coaches and players at Sale since I left, it’s a new team now, so I didn’t really give any insight.

Obviously, I’m good mates with Mark Cueto — I was best man at his wedding — and others like Fridge (Eifion Lewis-Roberts) and it is tough for them at the moment.

I’ve been in that position before myself as captain when you’ve had seven losses on the bounce and it’s tough, but I’m sure they’ll bounce back.

On the plus side though, we are on the way back up now and it was a win for us, which was what we needed.

David Lemi has not had much ball in recent league games, but he looked sharp against Sale, which was probably a benefit of getting his hands on the ball so much in the Amlin Challenge Cup game with Gernika.

We know he is dangerous whenever he gets the ball and he showed that against Sale — he’s a cracking player.

You’ve seen Dodge (Paul Hodgson) make tackles like that one on Will Addison to deny Sale a late try over the years for London Irish.

I’ve seen him cover that channel to make those tackles so many times and with him having come back from his concussion injuries, to put his head in there like that is a massive commitment from him.

Things like that are just one of the little things that all add up together and help us build as a squad. When you see stuff like that from your number nine, it’s massive.

It would be selfish of me to say I was shocked to have been on the bench for the Sale game, so there were no dramas for me with that decision.

Obviously, I was not happy with the selection because I always want to play, but in the same respect Craig Gillies and James Percival have been playing really well and it’s a long season, so we will all play at some point.