What a start to the play-offs that was. A great win over the London Towers before what I must say was an enthusiastic home crowd.

Now we are all set for our semi-final with Newcastle in Birmingham.

I enjoyed the Towers game. We were in better shape injury-wise than we have been for a long while and we played that way.

Before the game I told the players to take a couple of deep breaths and play the whole game out and I thought we did a really good job of that. There were bodies flying and elbows crashing and you didn't see us hardly at all get bothered by it.

I really like our chances in the final four. We get a chance to rest and practice and those are things we have not done.

This team has not progressed to its full capabilities because we have been so banged up. All we have been doing is resting and piecing things together all year but now we have got a chance.

That's the good news. The bad news is I think all four teams up in Birmingham next weekend will have a chance to win the thing. I'm not joking at all.

I was impressed by Scottish Rocks when they were down here recently and it didn't surprise me when they won at Chester. Sheffield are the league champions and then there are our opponents Newcastle.

I went to see them win at Thames Valley last Saturday and I thought they looked great. They were executing everything to perfection in an environment where you cannot do that very often. I was impressed by them but then I was pretty impressed by our guys last Sunday so I think it will be a good game.

Our last home date gave us a chance to get everyone from the club as a whole lined up on court to receive some recognition. Sometimes you have to take a step back and realise how big this club has become over the past two seasons.

I get all sorts of officials and executives commenting on that when they come down to see a game and a lot of our progress is down to the work behind the scenes.

As yet I have not really spoken to the players about Newcastle but you can see from the way they have been practising that the game is in the back of their minds and that is a good sign.

Nor have I really looked further ahead and started talking about deals for next season though it is common knowledge I really like the group of guys we have here. It will come down to what they want and whether we can afford to keep them.

Of course the league is receiving no TV money at the moment and there is some doubt as to the distribution of central funds. We have a couple of hopes for signing up a major sponsor but in this climate people are being very careful with how they spend their money so we will wait and see on those.

As for pre-season, I would hope to have a similar build-up this year to what we had last autumn. It clearly worked looking at the way we started the campaign. I tentatively enquired about a pre-season event in Estonia next August but we will not be playing in that. It is far too early and would make the season too long.

I noticed the players were asked for their NBA predictions yesterday. I wasn't asked at the time, presumably because everyone knows I will be backing the Lakers and their coach Phil Jackson, even though they went down by nearly 30 the other night. Don't worry about it Phil, we all have to lose some time.