The Force shocked the competition with an impressive three-point win over the Chiefs © Getty Images

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They may be on their way to becoming the most successful Force side in their short history, but Ben McCalman has told ESPNscrum the players won't get too far ahead of themselves with thoughts of the finals. After winning three consecutive games, for the second time in the Force's history, there has been a rise in talk of a finals berth, but McCalman said the side will be focusing on the next four games before any thought of that.

"The team's aware of what we need to do, but we're certainly not getting ahead of ourselves, we've won three games in a row now, we're just trying to carry that momentum on into the next small block of four," McCalman told ESPNscrum. "We're just breaking it down into blocks on either side of the bye and the Test window break, so our focus is just on the next four games. We'll set out goals and where we want to be after this block, and where we need to be if we're a chance of making finals - but that's a long way off at this stage.

"Ideally we're expected to win the next four out of four, but obviously things don't always come out the way you plan. Now that we've had a bye we've worked hard this week, and our real focus for the team is playing the Reds in Brisbane and then obviously the Waratahs here and the other Australian team the Melbourne Rebels, who gave us a win when we played them early on in the season."

After suffering from a slow start to their 2014 campaign, with two big losses to the Waratahs and the Brumbies, the Force turned their season around with a convincing win over the Rebels and continued on their winning ways by shocking the competition with an impressive three-point win over reigning champions the Chiefs. But McCalman doesn't believe it was lack of self-belief that caused the slow start, rather a soft pre-season.

"We always knew what we were capable of," McCalman said. "I think … in hindsight, we probably didn't have the strongest trial games and a few teething problems which we didn't properly rule out until the Waratahs game, and probably up until the second half of the Brumbies game. In Perth we started to play the attacking rugby that we really wanted to play, so I think just small adjustments and things we were able to quickly fix and we're seeing results now."

However, their history shows it isn't the prized scalps the Force struggle to win, but rather the tight matches with sides sitting lower down the ladder. Collecting the prized scalps of the Crusaders, Chiefs, Stormers and Brumbies, McCalman said defeating the big teams has been something the team has always been able to achieve, but defeating those teams lower on the ladder will be a goal.

"Our strongest performances were towards the end of last year, knocking off the Brumbies here in Perth, in our last game. We were always able to knock off the big teams, it was always the teams that weren't perceived to be highest on rankings that we sort of struggled against, and so it was a real focus to compete and win against the top teams, but also dominate those other teams lower on the table."

Many people had written the side off after the first two matches, but McCalman said the players didn't let the comments affect them, with the side already aware of the problems they needed to rectify.

"You do hear comments from other people; everyone's got their opinion, their entitled to their opinion," McCalman said. "Personally I don't try to buy into [media comments] too much; we were more frustrated in ourselves that we weren't playing the way we knew we were capable in those first three games. Letting an easy try in at the end of the first half against the Waratahs - a ball hitting a post and not regathering that - its simple things like that. We knew it wouldn't be hard to fix and we worked hard on those things after those first two games, and we're finally seeing results come through."