WE entertain Wasps at Sixways on Saturday for the first game of our LV= Cup campaign and we are all really looking forward to it.

The competition gives the guys who have not been involved in the first team the chance to put their hands up for selection.

Hopefully, there will be a big crowd and we can play some exciting rugby to get the Warriors fans on their feet and have Sixways bouncing.

On a personal note, I am fully fit and really looking forward to getting back out on the pitch and getting some games under my belt.

Errie Claassens has been a superb signing and he has definitely piled the pressure on me to show I deserve the number 15 shirt, but that is what I want in the squad. Errie has certainly set the standard and it’s now up to me to live up to it.

I watched the game at London Irish from the comfort of my sofa and I felt very positive at the end of the first-half, I thought we played well.

There were a couple of uncharacteristic defensive errors, but it was good to see the guys attacking so well.

Andy Goode really took the ball to the line, while Errie was pretty much untouchable and we looked dangerous with the ball in hand, which is something we wanted to work on, so that was good.

It was one of those ‘what might have been’ games — you would back Chris Jones to score that chance just before half-time nine times out of 10.

He picked a great line and broke through, but just couldn’t get the ball over the try-line and didn’t spot Ed Shervington in support. He has been getting plenty of stick off the boys for it already.

We then came out for the second-half and were slightly off the pace from where we should have been and that is something we need to look at.

Irish raised their game and you can’t afford to drop your levels even slightly against a team like them as they are devastating in attack.

It was a shame the scoreline ended up as it did — over the course of the 80 minutes they played the better rugby, but there were patches when we were well on top.

We will always get games when things don’t quite go right, but it wasn’t as if we were conceding tries through glaring system errors, it was more just missed tackles and we can work on that.

I know the guys involved will be very disappointed to have missed them.

However, it was good to see us scoring tries — people outside of the group were beginning to worry if we were capable, but that showed we can attack well and cause teams problems.

We are disappointed to have won just two of the first six Aviva Premiership games of the season, while we probably would have taken three out of six.

That said, we could have quite easily won four of the games, but it is only two and we will now spend the next couple of weeks trying to improve in time for the return to Premiership action after the break for the LV= Cup.

Finally, as many of you will know, it has been a difficult week for me, but I’d like to thank all the people who contacted me with kind messages of support — it means a lot and was really appreciated.