A RELIEVED Alan Gaffney spoke of his 'euphoria' at reaching the Guinness Premiership semi-finals despite admitting his side were well beaten by Worcester.

The Men in Black travel to face Gloucester on Saturday and Gaffney feels they are in with a good shout of reaching the final - providing they show a marked improvement on their latest performance.

"We wanted to finish in the top four and we're euphoric about that," said the Aussie. "It's been a great effort so far and we certainly want the season to continue for another few weeks yet. But we're far from happy with the performance at Worcester.

"We will regroup this week, examine what went wrong and look at our individual performances. I believe we can do that and we'll go into the Gloucester game knowing that they are a very good side - but also aware we can compete with the best providing we get things right."

Gaffney feels that Sarries can now be talked about as an elite Premiership force and knows victory over Gloucester will rubber-stamp that description.

"We're now competing with the elite and that's where we have said all along that we want to be," he added. "All season we've talked about the dream goal of finishing in the top four and we've done that.

"At the start of the season, I doubt many would have thought that we would finish in the top four so in that sense, we have achieved a lot this campaign.

"But we must not sit back now as we've a great chance to get to the final. We know it will take a massively improved performance, but we're in there competing."

Gaffney admitted Worcester deserved to stay up based on their performance against his side alone.

"They played with a lot of pride and passion and beat us in every department of the game," he said.