I HAVE just started to jog again now and I will really be able to push on with my recovery over the next couple of months.

Things are going well at the moment and I will definitely be back playing some time in February — we are targeting the Cornish Pirates game at Sixways in the British & Irish Cup on February 26 at the moment.

It will be somewhere around that date depending on how well it all goes — it could even be sooner.

As far as I am concerned, I need to get back playing before we reach the group stages of the play-offs, so I can give myself chance to prove my fitness and put myself forward for selection.

All of the injured players, like the ones who are in the team, get a week off to go away from the club and recharge their batteries, so I took the chance for a change of scenery and my girlfriend and I went to Glasgow for a few days.

Talking about injuries, I can’t believe how good Jake Abbott is looking at such an early stage in his recovery after he had the same knee injury I’ve had in the past.

He has been working hard doing the little things you can do with that injury and he has not lost a lot of muscle from his legs — he’ll be back stronger than ever.

Matt Mullan is coming along well too — like me, he’s also just had a week away from the club — and he’s not too far away from a return to action either.

We start our B&I Cup campaign at home to Newport on Saturday and I think it will be a very interesting competition. We have not played in it before, so we will not be used to playing a lot of the sides in it — going to places like Currie will be interesting and a good test of our squad.

The B&I Cup will be a really good opportunity for some of the fringe players to push themselves forwards.

Regardless of how many players we will rest during the competition, we have good squad strength and will be looking to win it.

The business side of the season is the Championship and winning promotion back to the Premiership, but we still need to develop a winning culture throughout the club.

It doesn’t matter who is on the pitch, we still need to go out to win every game we play and it is always good to win some silverware.

Obviously, it was not ideal that our game at Doncaster fell victim to the weather but, looking at the conditions, we should have expected it would have been off.

It means we will have a busy schedule now as the re-arranged game has been slotted in midweek. But, with the squad we have, we should be able to manage playing three games in a week.

It is a different situation for some of the teams in the Premiership as they get to share with football clubs, who can protect their pitch, while we probably could have managed to get the game on at Sixways because of the covers we have.

However, that is asking a bit much of the other teams in the Championship, who don’t have those kind of facilities at their disposal.

Matt Kvesic had a very good game against Esher, especially considering he was drafted in to cover seven very late on. He is a bright prospect, the type of player we will hopefully keep hold of — there will certainly be interest from elesewhere — and one who can be an important part of the club’s future.