Wasps must stay grounded - Southwell

Hugo Southwell: Wants Wasps to kick on

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London Wasps skipper Hugo Southwell wants his side to keep their feet on the ground ahead of three massive upcoming Aviva Premiership fixtures.

Sitting pretty in fourth position in the table, Southwell says that Wasps' upcoming games against Gloucester, London Irish and Worcester have firmly sharpened the minds.

"The Gloucester game this weekend is massive for both sides," he said.

"We are right next to each other in the table and both of us are coming into the weekend on the back of good away wins.

"We are obviously delighted to come back to training this week having got that win away at The Stoop, as we haven't won there in quite some time, but the mind has been focused pretty quickly today by the challenge we have on Sunday.

"We have to back that win up with a big performance at home."

With Wasps surprising everyone with their stay in the top four, Southwell says it is reward for a lot of effort.

"We have been working really hard as a squad so we feel we deserve to be there but if you look at the games we have left, you'd realise that we are going to have to keep working incredibly hard to stay there," he added.

After this weekend, we've got two difficult away matches at London Irish and Worcester and then we come back to some huge home games so the schedule is pretty tough.

"It is nice to be in the top four and hopefully we can stay there but we need to keep improving."

Looking ahead to Gloucester this weekend, Southwell said his side must play smart rugby to win the match.

"They have threats all over the park and you could see at the weekend that their back three are very dangerous so we need to kick very well to them.

"We can't be loose there. We have improved a lot I think as a team since we last played Gloucester in September.

"It was early in the season when we weren't doing enough to win the tight games and I think we have moved forward well from that.

We have a good record at Adams Park this season and if we play well there's no reason we can't continue this winning streak but if we don't we could be punished."