Gloucesterer are facing a defining season

Gloucester marked their 150th anniversary last season. Celebrated would be too strong a word, although they did win a first trophy in nine years after beating Leicester to secure the Premiership Cup and they reached the Challenge Cup final.

It was a grim story in the Premiership. Gloucester finished one off the bottom for the second successive season and were doubled by five of the other nine clubs. Kingsholm, the ground bought from the Castle Grim Estate in 1891 for £4,000, was where fans shed tears.

The Premiership has yet to be won by a west country club. Gloucester, Bath and Bristol have all topped the table in the play-off era but lost all four finals they have appeared in between them. Only Exeter in the south-west have broken the hold of the Midlands, London and, to a far lesser extent, the North.

Gloucester have made the play-offs five times, reaching the final in 2003 and 2007, but only once in the last 13 seasons, five years ago when they lost at Saracens. Only two players from the 23 that day were at the club last season, Ruan Ackermann and Lewis Ludlow, compared to the 10 who were still at Sarries.

There has been a regular churn of players and coaches but after appointing George Skivington as head coach in the summer of 2020, the youngest in the top flight, emphasis was placed on stability and the club has kept faith with the former England A captain despite a largely disappointing league record.

Skivington was promoted to director of rugby last season and the club’s former second row Alex Brown took over as chief executive from Lance Bradley. Gloucester are one of the clubs being driven on sustainability lines with no owner making up for annual losses, but the board will be expecting a far greater impact in the Premiership next season after two campaigns when they finished one off the bottom and failed to qualify for the Champions Cup.

Wales call up: Josh Hathaway

“When Gloucester are able to pick from strength, they should be a match for anyone”

They started with two victories last season after a 100 per cent record in the Premiership Cup, pipping Harlequins at home before winning narrowly at Newcastle. Then came a run of nine successive league defeats, a club record, starting with a 24-3 reverse at home to Saracens, who had lost their opening two games.

Kingsholm was no refuge with Gloucester not picking up a bonus point in the defeats to Sarries, Bath, which saw a second half collapse, and Leicester. The highlight was a narrow defeat at Exeter and a costly late lapse against the eventual champions, Northampton, but in between was a painful 51-26 defeat at Bristol.

The reverse at Ashton Gate proved a turning point in Gloucester’s season. It was their sixth straight league reverse and made a tilt at the title improbable given some of the fixtures to come. Skivington had placed a greater emphasis on attack during the close season, but injury to Scotland outside-half Adam Hastings in the final Premiership Cup match against Coventry left him without an experienced hand in a key position.

With England centre Mark Atkinson making only a couple of Premiership appearances before accepting he could not overcome a knee injury, Gloucester were without two of their senior officers. Add in lay-offs in all three areas of the pack and the depth of Gloucester’ss squad was exposed.

It should serve them well in the future. The likes of Caolan Englefield, Seb Atkinson and Josh Hathaway, away, who is on Wales’s tour to Australia, have gained exposure and Gloucester signed 22-yer old outside-half Charlie Atkinson from Leicester halfway through the campaign.

It was after the Bristol defeateat that Gloucester targeted the two cup competitions they were involved in as their most likely source of silver and they tightened up tactically, feeling that games would have been one had they been more pragmatic and less focused on movement.

It had an impact on their league form with three bonus points defeats followed by victories over Sale and Leicester, the latter coming after Gloucester had defeated the Tigers in the Premiership Cup final. And after making the knock-out stage of the Challenge Cup, home victories over Castres and Ospreys earned a home semi-final against Treviso.

The cup runs prompted Skiving-ton to change the side up at Saracens where Hathaway’s try hat-trick salvaged a try bonus point after they had trailed by 40 points with 14 minutes to go.

There was to be no letting up by Northampton at Franklin’s Gardens three weeks later after Gloucester fielded a virtually reserve side having defeated Treviso to set upon a Challenge Cup final with the Sharks. The Saints scored in the opening minutes and never let up on a warm day, winning 90-0.

Such was the backlash on social media that Brown agreed to be interviewed on radio. While supporting the management and players, he said he understood the unrest of supporters but did not subscribe to the belief that change would provide an instant remedy.

“I’ve been involved in club rugby for a long time, and I can say that George is an excellent coach,” said Brown. “The group around him are equally excellent. I can understand the frustration with team performance but it’s never ever quite as simple as change will fix things.

CEO Alex Brown

“We will do that review over the course of the summer, but I’ll go back to my point that George is an excellent coach. He is under contract and I’m not going to talk about suggestions on anything with his employment.”

There have been examples in recent seasons of clubs scrambling from the nether reaches to make the play-off final. Leicester did it two seasons ago under Steve Borthwick, defeating Saracens at Twickenham, and Bath were there earlier this month two years after finishing bottom of a 13-strong league.

Gloucester finished fifth three seasons ago and led the way in the scrums and driving mauls, but they have been dealt a poor hand with injuries in the last two campaigns and when they were overpowered by the Sharks in the Challenge Cup final, they were missing three of their first choice tight five forwards against a side that had a World Cup winning front row and Eben Etzebeth behind them.

Gloucester now train at Kingsholm, which has a hybrid pitch, rather than their old base at Hartpury College. Skivington said during last season he did not know if it was a factor behind a high injury rate and that it was being looked into.

Even the last couple of seasons have shown that when Gloucester are able to field their strongest available side, they can be a handful but it has not happened often and the economies of scale in professional rugby post Covid mean a layer of senior cover has gone.

“We have been shallow in some positions in the last couple of seasons,” said Skivington, after the final Premiership match of the season against Newcastle. “When we have had the numbers we have looked good, but when we haven’t we have had to expose young players.

“Strength in depth is the big factor for us. We have it in some areas but we need to have the ability to replace all players who have taken a bang or need a rest. We have some really good young lads and they will be better for having experienced some really tough situations. We are bringing in some old heads and I think it will make for a good blend.”

It has to. Gloucester is that rarity in England, a rugby city with loyal and vocal supporters. The rise of Bath has added to the twitchiness, but in the boardroom there is frustration rather than panic. Gloucester have shown various attributes during Skivington’s time in charge. Now they have to put them all together.

Ins and outs

The signing of Wales’s half-backs Gareth Anscombe and Tomos Williams should give Gloucester the direction they lacked last season when, with Adam Hastings injured and young players exposed, the lack of a steady hand on the tiller saw a number of games get away from them.

The experienced pair are a nod to now rather than the long-term. Anscombe is 34 and has recently struggled with injuries while Williams is 29, although given the likes of other players in the position like Danny Care, Richard Wigglesworth, Neil de Kock and Ben Youngs, he is not long past the novice stage.

Their job will be to give Gloucester direction off the field as well as on it, helping bring on half-backs like Caolan Englefield, who provided more than a few of the better moments last season, and Charlie Atkinson, who is rated by the England head coach Steve Borthwick and trained with the national squad ahead of the summer tour.

Christian Wade will replace Jonny May on the wing and at 33 is another who will add knowhow while prop Alfie Petch has joined from Biarritz with Fraser Balmain leaving for Saracens in a surprise move that was announced earlier this month.

New look: Gareth Anscombe

“We have to be more competitive in the Premiership and I am confident that we will be,” said Skiving-ton. “My aim as a coach is to win it, something I am desperate to do. We will be going hard at it.”

Like most clubs, as squad sizes fall, there are more departures than arrivals. May, Hastings, Santi Socino, Henry Elrington, Balmain and Alex Hearle have moved on and a senior layer has been stripped from the squad.

What Gloucester need is better fortune with injuries. Val Rapava Ruskin missed most of last season with Hastings, Matias Alemanno, Ruan Ackermann, Zach Mercer, Santi Carreras and George McGuigan all missing a chunk of the campaign.

Potentially the biggest signing is that of Josh Hathaway who had earned a senior contract after coming through the academy. He can play at full-back or on the wing and one of the tasks for Skivington is to find the right balance between youth and experience.

When Gloucester are able to pick from strength, they should be a match for anyone. What they need is an identity.

Watershed

When Gloucester lost 90-0 at Northampton, it was nearly two years to the day that they had beaten rivals Bath 64-0 at Kingsholm to plunge their neighbours into a state of deep gloom.

And where are they now? Bath used the pain of that humiliation to pick themselves up under Johann van Graan, moving from the bottom of the Premiership to the play-off final at Twickenham, and Franklin’s Gardens has to make the nadir for Gloucester.

There were differences. Bath were close to full strength at Kingsholm but Gloucester rested most of their first team at Northampton ahead of the Challenge Cup semi-final against Treviso.

But every time a result is mentioned, who highlights the respective strength of the teams? It has to make a turning point, somewhere never to go again, a stigma left in the past.

If Gloucester are to climb the table, they need to make Kingsholm a ground opponents do not expect to get much rather than a soup kitchen. The long-suffering supporters only saw three home league victories last season, against Harlequins, Sale and Newcastle.

They still turn up in their numbers and the Shed continues to give opposing players grief, but the need for the crowd to have something to bind on was shown in the Premiership Cup final against Leicester when home advantage was made to count.

Gloucester have a lot going for them, but their successes over the years have been in the cups which points to a side lacking in consistency but capable of rising to a one-off occasion.

They were the inaugural winners of the national cup competition in 1972 and the John Player Cup in 1978. They have won the Challenge Cup twice and been runners-up three times, but league success has eluded them.

They twice finished second in the old division one and topped the Premiership in 2002-3, finishing 15 points above Wasps, who were second. It was the first year of the play-off system and Gloucester, who as leaders went straight to the final, were beaten 39-3 by Wasps.

Tomas Williams

They were top again in 2007 and 2008, losing heavily to Leicester in the final and then by a point at home in the semi-final. Since then they have finished in the top four twice and been in the bottom half of the table 10 times.

Last season was a reflection of the previous 15 years, something Skivington is determined to rectify. It promises to be a defining season.