I WAS not included in the England squad for the Six Nations, which was very disappointing, but I have certainly not given up my ambitions to play for my country.

But I have to be realistic - we are at the bottom end of the Premiership and the vast majority of the players in the England squad are playing for top-four sides.

However, the good thing for Worcester is that we will be at full-strength during the Six Nations when some of our opponents will be missing players who are on international duty.

Tomorrow night, we play Montauban in the European Challenge Cup and they are a tough side to play - a stereotypical French side who are strong on their home turf.

They will be a very different proposition to the side that we comfortably beat at Six-ways. But we have come on a lot since that game too and if we can replicate the way we played at Newcastle, then we should be fine.

Montauban will be strong in the scrum, they have a very good line-out and they will look to test us up front. If we are not strong in that department from the start, they will try and hammer us.

At the moment, we are very much concentrating on the immediate objectives in front of us, but the European Chal-lenge Cup is a a great route into the Heineken Cup.

We have put ourselves in a good position in the group stage and, if we can win a few more games, we can secure a home tie in the quarter-final, which would be a big advantage. With that in mind, to-morrow's game with Montau-ban is massive for us.

From a club point of view, the Heineken Cup is where we aspire to be and if we could achieve that it would be a huge thing for everyone associated with Warriors.

It would be brilliant to have the opportunity to travel and play the likes of Toulouse and Stade Français as well as the big Irish teams.

So, if we can win four games in a row in the European Challenge Cup, we will have got ourselves to a one-off final game that could give us the chance to qualify for the Heineken Cup. That is certainly our easiest route into the competition at the mo-ment.

It is still very difficult for us to understand how we lost at Newcastle on Sunday. Argu-ably, we scored five tries without reply and still lost.

It was very difficult to take but there were plenty of positives in how we played.

I was very proud of the Worcester players' commitment - we stepped up a level of performance during that game and at least we got another bonus point.

We felt Aleki Lutui scored twice - once from a drive and once from open play - and Thinus Delport's try' was good too. I passed the ball from in their 22' to him and he was behind the line, so I don't know how it could have been seen as a forward pass.

It was massively frustrating, but one of those things and we have to take it on the chin and move on. It is very difficult to play at this level, but it is also very difficult to referee at this level.

Jonny Wilkinson was on top form and that is why he has got his reputation - he does that week in, week out.