AFTER the Bath game, we spoke about how the last two weeks in the LV= Cup would provide us with an opportunity for the youngsters to perform away from the Aviva Premiership.

The competition has been excellent for us — the win at Cardiff Blues was much-needed and, although we lost the match, our performance against Leicester Tigers was really encouraging.

It was frustrating, though, because the game was there for us to win and we missed the opportunity because of a few discipline and handling errors, as well as the poor goal-kicking.

We lost the match rather than Leicester winning it, but it was still the best we have played at home this year and I thought we were excellent in the first-half.

People can see we are heading in the right direction, we just need to cut out the unforced errors.

The biggest improvement is that four to six weeks ago we were getting everything wrong and not crossing over what we were doing in training into the match days.

We were making system errors and getting our game-plan wrong at times and the home defeat to Sale Sharks was a real low point for us, but we have improved remarkably since then. We need to now convert this into consistent victories.

I think our youngsters are leading the way at the moment — Max Stelling and Andy Symons were outstanding in the centres, James Stephenson was lively on the wing and Richard de Carpentier showed how promising he is.

Ofa Fainga’anuku, on the loosehead, is turning into a useful scrummager for us and it was obviously great for James Percival to make his comeback after a frustrating time with injuries.

When a young guy like Andy comes into a side, it is difficult if you haven’t seen them play, so you often reserve judgement, but he has been a real positive and was superb against Leicester before having to go off with a knock. Dean Ryan may well have found a bit of a gem there.

We head to Sale on Friday for what will be a massive match back in the Aviva Premiership, but the biggest change in our squad over the last two weeks is our confidence.

The LV= Cup games have been good for us and we will use that to put in a big performance against the Sharks.

Sale gave us a lesson up front when they came to Sixways earlier in the season and they were the one team this year that have really pushed us around the park.

They dominated the driving line-outs and the scrums in that match and those will be big focus areas for us this week.