GETTING off to a winning start in the LV= Cup was important as Worcester Warriors strive to find some consistency.

We put a strong team out against Scarlets because we want to do well in the competition before returning to the Aviva Premiership.

It was a tough game and a lot of the guys hadn’t played for a long time so we had a mixed selection but we pulled it together in the second-half and that showed with the 34-18 victory. We got the four tries and five points which is what we wanted to do.

It was scrappy in the first-half and they threw everything at us and we couldn’t get our line-out drive functioning which was frustrating. They also put a lot of heat on at the rucks.

But you could feel things were coming together and we wanted to play some rugby because we had been given a free licence by Richard Hill to throw the ball around. Perhaps the team tried to do that too much in the first-half but we stuck with it and it came good in the end.

The standard in the competition is going up and up and teams take it more seriously every year.

It’s a good chance for a lot of players to stake a claim for Premiership games but also for guys coming back from injury.

Andy Short, James Currie and Ben Howard all got their chance last Saturday and they did well. Whenever they have been given an opportunity this season they have taken it.

They are the future for Warriors and I am sure the club will look after them because they are the type of players you want coming through the system at Sixways.

In general, things are going the right way but I am not one for looking at things with rose-tinted glasses.

It won’t happen overnight but we will keep doing what we have been.

Recently, we have slipped back into the Worcester of old with too much emphasis on our defence and we had a chat about that after the Exeter game.

We want to be an attacking force and if you look at the stats we are scoring more tries and playing a bit more rugby than we have in the past.

Now we will be looking to do the same again at Wasps in our second LV= Cup game on Sunday.

We are going there to win the game and that will tee us up for the visit of Saracens in the Premiership the following Friday, which is also a game we can win.

The next few weeks are huge for us because we have Saracens, Harlequins, London Welsh and Sale Sharks to play in the Premiership before the turn of the year.

These are fixtures that can move us up a couple of places in the table if we get things right.