I WAS surprised that no Worcester Warriors players were included in the England Saxons squad that was announced this week.

However, we are not a particularly fashionable club at the moment and international call-ups tend to go hand-in-hand with guys playing at the more successful clubs.

If we can start next season in the same way we've finished this one, then it will be more and more difficult for the selectors to leave Warriors players out of the international squads.

There are advantages for us with our guys not being called up, because it means we can all have a full pre-season campaign together. That will allow us to make further strides forward so we can fully attack next season from day one.

Similarly, Chris Horsman was left out of the Wales squad, but it certainly isn't the end of his international career. Chris has had a difficult season with injuries but if we can get him fit and playing for all of next year, then I've no doubt he'll get back in the Wales squad.

He is an incredibly driven person, so it was nice to see him get over the whitewash against Newcastle. You could see how much it meant to him by his celebrations - in fact, I think he is a little embarrassed by that now!

Beating Newcastle like we did was a fantastic way to finish off our Guinness Premiership season.

It was important for us to give a big thank-you to our fans, who have stood by us throughout what has been an, at times, turbulent campaign. They have given us constant backing all the way.

We can only play what is put in front of us and most teams are tired by this time of the season. Half of the Newcastle squad we played hadn't played in their mid-week game prior to our match.

We haven't had a great deal of squad rotation in our team, so a lot of our guys were tired too, but we can only judge ourselves on what we did on the day - the win was very satisfying.

With the game won late on, Drew Hickey even took the opportunity to kick the last conversion. We'd spoken about that before the game and I said that I was fine with it, if we were in a comfortable position, so he snatched the ball off Joey Carlisle and slotted the kick.

Miles Benjamin scored two more tries in that game and he has been a big positive for us this year.

He got injured before last season so we didn't get to see much of him, but we knew he was very talented then. This year, he has backed up that potential and been an important player for us.

All of the young lads who have come into the first team this year have done well and they have really added to the squad's strength in depth.

The likes of Matt Mullan, James Collins, Tom Wood, Joey Carlisle, Matt Cox, Chris Pennell and Jonny Arr have all come through into the first team this year and that gives us something really tangible to build on for next year.

Now our attention has turned to the European Challenge Cup final. Everyone wants to be involved and the intensity is very high in training.

Invariably, some people will miss out, but we are a strong group who stick together and it will be a great honour for those selected in the 22.