GLOUCESTER prop Nick Wood admits he is only too pleased that England's loss proved to be the Cherry & Whites' gain last weekend.

No .8 Morgan was released from the England set-up ahead of their clash with Australia on Saturday and was thus available for Gloucester's LV= Cup clash with London Welsh.

He certainly didn't disappoint. While Stuart Lancaster's side was losing to Australia, Morgan was running in a hat-trick. That treble helped Morgan secure his recall for this weekend's clash with South Africa.

A 46-20 win over the Exiles was a welcome return to LV= Cup form having gone down 33-27 against the Ospreys in the opening round of fixtures.

And Wood admitted he was only too pleased to toast the victory and also his influential scrum colleague Morgan who joined Gloucester from the Scarlets this summer.

Wood was also equally complementary about the Cherry & Whites team at large - insisting their first-half display against Welsh proved they can be a match for anyone this term.

"Ben Morgan is fantastic and he was a great addition to the club," he said. "He put in a great display against Welsh and hopefully he can keep it up for us for the rest of the season.

"It was very pleasing to beat Welsh at the weekend, especially as we had quite a few changes to the team from the previous week.

"We had to defend quite hard in the second half to secure the win, but if we continue playing like we did in that first half teams will struggle to beat us."

After the LV= Cup action it is back to the Aviva Premiership this weekend with Gloucester welcoming Sale to Kingsholm on Saturday.

The two sides have endured conflicting fortunes in the Premiership this season. Sale sit bottom having won just once this term while Wood and co currently inhabit one of the play-off berths after a memorable start to the campaign.

Gloucester's last Premiership action was a 28-25 defeat to reigning champions Harlequins and Wood added: "I didn't think we played that well when we lost to Quins in our last Premiership game, and they played some good attacking stuff, but despite that we were never out of contention.

"We were missing a few guys through injury, so we did pretty well to only lose by three points to the champions considering we couldn't field a full-strength team."

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