IT was a night of firsts for many of the players involved in the Worcester Warriors side that reached the Premiership Rugby Cup final on Wednesday night following their 39-25 win over Gloucester at Kingsholm.

Given that Warriors had not won at the home of the Cherry and Whites since 2009, this was the first time any of the 23 man squad have achieved a victory at the historic ground.

Very few have ever reached a cup final and for man of the match Gareth Simpson, the final in May against London Irish will be the first final he has ever reached in senior rugby.

"I have never been in a senior cup final before," he said.

"This is a very exciting opportunity for me and something I am very much looking forward to.

"We are not here to just make up the numbers, we want to go for this competition and get some silverware for this great club.

"I really do love this club. I want to take it places and it's a really good feeling to take them to a final."

Simpson's chip and chase set-up Tom Howe's try early in the game and he added a crucial score of his own just before half-time to bring Worcester back into the contest.

The scrum-half then scampered over nine minutes after the break for his second of the evening to put Worcester into the lead.

He played an influential role and rightly picked up the accolade of man-of-the match at the full-time whistle, before speaking to the Worcester News.

"It's a really good feeling," he added.

"This club has not been in a final for many years so to be one of the 23 to take this club to a final is something very special.

"You always know it's going to be a good atmosphere at Kingsholm and we wanted to try and silence the crowd early on but it didn't really happen that way and we let them into the game.

"But at half-time we discussed getting back to what we wanted to do. We weren't at our best in the first half and we knew we just needed to put more effort in and it would come.

"We made a few mistakes which let them into it but we reacted in the right way second-half, they started making mistakes and we capitalised on them and built momentum that way."