THE long trip up to Newcastle awaits us this Sunday and Kingston Park is probably the coldest ground I've ever played on.

And that's including some fairly nasty Welsh hillsides!

I can remember a game a couple of years ago up there when the lads came in at half-time and couldn't even hold their cups of tea!

Of course, it also means a long trip north for us on Saturday, leaving the lads with some time to kill.

No doubt there will be a few games of cards on the coach, although it's usually the backs crowding around the card table.

Among the forwards, you have the Mark Regan group with the Scrabble board out. You can always see some pretty impressive four-letter words on display, although a five-letter effort tends to cause a bit of a shock!

Mind you, Scrabble and cards are a more attractive proposition than the games of snakes and ladders that we seem to be playing with our season.

Every time we seem to be climbing up, we slip back down again and it is so frustrating.

Your last loss is always the one that hurts the most, but the disappointment of our result against London Irish was that our performance was so far below what we achieved against Gloucester.

We had a plan for our game but we let it slip away too easily.

None of the players takes any defeat lightly, especially this one because of the special history Bath have in the national cup.

But perhaps more than anything, it was the performance we put in that hurt. There was a real sense of anticipation and, after the Gloucester victory, a bit of expectation too.

There has been a lot of honesty among the players about how hard we are prepared to work to turn things around.

Everyone wants to know that the guy next to you is going to work hard and now is the time to stand up and be counted.

Newcastle are a pretty useful side with a solid pack and a good all-round game, with the likes of Pat Lam, Gary Armstrong and Jonny Wilkinson.

Wilkinson didn't play against us at the Rec a few weeks ago and he's obviously a very good player we will have to watch on Sunday.

We've been working hard this week but there was an unfortunate reminder of the precarious business of being a player at Monday's training session.

One of our young players, Joe El Abd fractured his leg and dislocated his ankle, in training.

It's obviously a sad personal note for him and for all the other players there is the realisation of the thin line we tread with injuries.

Hopefully, Joe will be back soon.

After Newcastle it's Christmas of course always a hard time for any professional sportsman.

Discipline for the players is the key, which goes against a lot of the spirit of the festive season.

That said, it's going to be really important for the team to get their heads down. We can't afford distractions and we have to stop playing this game of snakes and ladders.

We want to go into the New Year with some hope and some confidence. So the best Christmas present we could have would be wins over Newcastle and Bristol.