IT was fantastic to sign a contract extension and I'm really looking forward to seeing where we can go with the club.

My time here has been a big challenge but it has been massively rewarding -- Sixways is certainly somewhere I want to end my career.

The fans are great here. The club is great and I don't see why anybody would want to leave to be perfectly honest.

It's a great place to play rugby and I think that was very evident at the weekend.

I've signed an extension until 2008 and I think sorting it out now is the most prudent thing to do.

When the important part of the season is upon you, the last thing you want to be doing is talking about contracts and worrying about contracts when what you should be doing is concentrating on results -- especially if the money-end of this season is anything like last!

As for Sunday's game, it was a massive occasion and Sixways was probably the loudest it has ever been.

On reflection, we are probably a little bit disappointed with what we did. I think we had opportunities in the game. We certainly had opportunities where we could have pressured them more and we let them off a little too easily.

A draw is no good to anyone. It's almost like a non-result. There's so much expectation that when you get a draw it is almost like a damp squib.

Gloucester are a good side and they've got so many good individual players that they can turn a game on its head instantly and you've always got that fear.

You can be in the game and then have a bad 10 minutes and you can be 20 points out of the game.

I thought Ludovic Mercier was phenomenal. You can put pressure on him but he still puts 60 metres on the kick. It's very difficult playing against a team with a kicker like that.

In the first game, you are always a little bit on edge and it was quite an intense situation for us.

But we have to react to those situations because it won't be the first or the last time that happens.

That's the nature of the Premiership. It's hugely competitive and you are under pressure every week.

From our point of view our scrum went well, which is pleasing. But there are other aspects of our game which normally we get right which we didn't.

It was hugely disappointing for Andy Gomarsall to miss out against his former club but it's a long season and that is only one game.

From a team perspective, we are very lucky to have both Matt Powell and Gommars in the squad. If one goes down we've got a class nine waiting to come in to play some rugby.

After we get a few games under our belts we will settle down a bit and play a bit more rugby.

At least we are now into the flow of the season. We've got our first away game on Sunday against London Irish and it is never easy on the road.

We've got to make sure that we get our focus right and we're going to have to raise our game from Sunday.

It's early on in the season but Irish look like they are in form. They look a good outfit this year and they need to be respected.