OUR trip to Italy to play Rovigo in the Amlin Challenge Cup was a good, relaxed few days away for the lads who went.

There were a lot of people in the squad who are coming back from injury, while the young players impressed too, especially Max Stelling who came on for the last 20 minutes and looks to be a cracking player.

Josh Drauniniu and Nikki Walker didn’t stop running for the whole 80 minutes, which was great because it is easy to drop your levels in these type of games, but we just didn’t let up.

Josh is a classy player and he is continuing his comeback from injury, which began with an impressive performance in our last league game against Leicester Tigers.

Both Max and Ben Howard look like quality players for the future, while it was also the first time I got to play with Danny Gray, who has been out injured all season, and I like his style of play — he likes to play flat and take the ball right up to the line.

We take what we can out of these type of weekends away — we knew we would go there and pick up the bonus point win. But Perpignan won’t slip up, so it was good to be able to just relax and play.

We now go into the game with Gernika this weekend and we have a few training days at Sixways this week.

We play Gernika on Saturday and that is us finished in Europe for this season.

We always knew it would come down to us and Perpignan for who would progress from the pool and we did well to beat them at our place.

In the return game in France I had to come off with an ankle injury, which was very frustrating, but I remember leaving the field feeling we could win the match.

Whether we are playing in the Heineken Cup or the Amlin Challenge Cup next season, we will be up for it once again.

It is good to have this break from Aviva Premiership action for the European and LV= Cup games, but we need to get back to it when we return to league action at Bath in a few weeks to put together a final push to finish off our season strongly.

I went to pay my respects at David Tait’s funeral yesterday. He was a really good lad who I watched come through the academy at Sale Sharks.

He was a really outgoing lad and I spent quite a lot of time with him off the field when we were at Sale.

We lost Selorm Kuadey from the Sale club not that long ago too and for Taity to go in the same way is a nightmare for everyone who knew him, especially all his family and friends.

Taity had been out with his friends having a bite to eat early on the day that he died — I didn’t believe it at first when I heard the news.