WHEN you look back at the past 12 months, we've only lost one league game since the London Welsh game here at Sixways.

That's now 28 games and one defeat. In modern-day rugby, it's a unique record and one to be proud of.

Now it's our collective responsibility to keep pushing forward to achieve our aims.

Nobody has ever said it's an easy road we're heading down.

The state of this club is a credit to everyone who's put in the work over the past years, not just the past 18 months.

The only problem is that the task ahead of us grows harder the further we progress.

If you take the current league tables as a ranking system, we're now rated the 16th best rugby club in the country, at worst.

But that means we're there to be knocked off our perch, and only a totally professional approach will keep us there.

Watching teams play in Premiership One shows how we'll need the will, the hunger and the desire to be winners every single week. There has been some back-slapping, and rightly so. But now we need to work even harder.

Away from the long, hard slog of the league, we can turn our attention to the glamour of the cup and a trip to Coventry awaits.

It's a very tough draw for us but, to be fair, it's a difficult game for them too.

I'm a great admirer of their director of rugby, Derek Eaves, and it's good to see a side with the history of Coventry restoring its pride under the investment of Keith Fairbrother.

There won't be much between the two sides and, because it's cup rugby, there'll certainly be an edge to it. So we hope for a great rugby occasion.

It's great to have signed Niall Malone on Monday. He's a big name for us to secure.

He's part of our ongoing search for the right quality players, but these aren't easy days for rugby and the lads will all be working extremely hard to pull together.

Thursday, November 12, 1998.