We picked up two wins on the road including a dogged hard fought win up at Coventry which in my experience is always a hard place to go and win.

All in all the festive period has been a successful one for us.

We picked up two wins on the road including a dogged hard-fought win up at Coventry which in my experience is always a hard place to go and win.

To do so in the horrendous conditions on the day was a real moral-booster for the team as we had to really pull together to hold on to our one-point lead.

Bringing our one-and-a-half day Christmas holiday to an abrupt end was the away trip to Manchester which was always going to be a tricky fixture with the freezing, northern conditions and the difference in crowd atmosphere up there.

Despite not playing wonderfully it was again good to come away with the result. With a lot being said about our away form it is good for us to go to these places and win well and it really shows how this team is maturing.

Thrown in between these two away trips was probably the win of the season so far at home to high flying Nottingham.

Being the entertainers we are we decided to give the fans a bit of a show and throw away our slender lead deep in to injury time only for Keiran Hallett to nail a penalty a couple of minutes later. The atmosphere from the fans that day was intense as they really got behind us.

One piece of bad news from the holidays is the injury to Kieran Hallett that is going to keep him out for the rest of the season. It happened during a training session and was really a freak injury with legs and bodies finding themselves in the wrong places.

I accompanied Kieran to the hospital and it must be said his ability to polish off morphine (20ml!) and gas and air (two whole cans!) was quite incredible.

With him playing so well it is obviously a loss but in Ross Laidlaw and Alex Davies we have two very able replacements ready and willing to come in. They would both add something to the team...Laidlaw - hair, Davies - anger.

Last week the boys made the trip to London Welsh only for the game to be called off due to a frozen pitch that even Graham Dawe couldn't thaw out using his agricultural know-how.

This left a window open for "team bonding" in London which a few of the boys found impossible to resist. Every cloud and all that!

Hopefully this week the weather will improve for our trip to "grim oop north" Doncaster in the cup. Having lived in Yorkshire for three years I know to expect the worst but as it is I will probably be resting a knock to my ribs back here in the glorious sunshine of the English Riviera.

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