I love it when I’m out in front of The Shed

Jon Newcombe hears from George Barton about his switch from No.10 to 15 and the propects for the Cherry & Whites this season

IT’S still very early days for George Barton at full-back following his switch from fly-half but already he has drawn comparisons with a Gloucester No.15 of yesteryear in Tim Smith.

Barton, who has just 330 career minutes under his belt as the Cherry & Whites full-back, still has some way to go before making any serious inroads on Smith’s record of 347 appearances in 14 seasons in Cherry & White in the 1980s and 90s.

But the two players from very different generations already have something in common other than playing the same position – a cool head under pressure.

Barton, who turns 24 this month, produced one of the moments of the Premiership season when the ball fell off his kicking tee against Bath and he picked it up and drop kicked a sublime near-touchline conversion.

For many Shedheads, they had never seen the like before but Gloucester’s social media team, no doubt aided by a fan of an older vintage, dug up video footage of an almost identical piece of skill by Smith, below, in a match against Nottingham at their old Beeston ground and published it on the X platform.

“I didn’t know someone at Gloucester had done it before until the video was put out. I really enjoyed the video. I was like, ‘wow, this was done back when the rugby balls weren’t as nice to kick, I’d imagine, and the pitches weren’t as good,’ said Barton. “I like looking back on the past and it was really cool to see.” Gloucester-born Barton is proud of the club’s history and is fully appreciative of it, but he wasn’t aware of Smith before the clip was shared to the world. He said: “One of our players, Jake Morris, his dad (Simon), I believe, actually played with him, so he was telling me about him the other day.”

Unfortunately for Barton, he ended the West Country derby defeat carrying an injury after landing awkwardly on his ankle.

“I landed on the side of it, it’s the ligaments on the inside. It’s not the end of the world, it’s not too bad, I’m not too worried about it, it’s just a couple of weeks in a boot and then I am pretty sweet from there. Hopefully, I will be back at the end of the Premiership Cup.

“It’s what you sign up for as a rugby player. I have not had many big ones. I had one big one when I was younger, which was my shoulder, but other than that, I have been very fortunate so I can’t moan too much.”

Hopefully for Barton it is only a temporary setback, as he’d been enjoying his new role in the team.

“At the start of the season, I decided to make a bit of a position change with Skivs (Gloucester director of rugby George Skivington),” he said. “I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, I didn’t know how much game time I would end up getting.

“I feel like I played quite well in pre-season and started the Sarries game and I was really happy with how it went in that game, especially with it being a new position, and I have just enjoyed it from here on in.

“It is a lot more tiring, you do a lot of sprinting, a lot of top-speed stuff, rather than at 10 where you are kind of in one gear, constantly running. So it is different like that. You don’t touch the ball anywhere near as much, which is also a tough one to take. But I am enjoying it.

“People usually think the high ball stuff is the big change but I have always loved taking high balls, even at 10. So it is hadn’t been too much of a change, it has been a pretty natural transition.”

It’s not just Barton who has changed. Gloucester are a team transformed from box kick bores to Kingsholm cavaliers. The new running rugby approach is burning defenders, and calories.

“I think if you asked any of the boys they’d say their bodies are feeling it a lot more,” admitted Barton, who is back up to 88kgs (13st 9lbs), and hoping to add a few more, after shedding some weight in pre-season.

“Our nutritionist, (former Gloucester player) James Hudson, has been amazing with us. He’s sat us down for numerous chats saying we need to get even more food into us to play the way we want to play because we are burning a lot more because of the amount of running.

“But fitness-wise we have always been a fit team, the last few years we have been up there as one of the fittest teams in the Prem, so that probably wasn’t that much of a change through pre-season.

“I think a lot more of it was getting ball in hand and expressing ourselves in training sessions so when we get to games we have that base skillset so we can chuck the ball about a bit.

“Our attack isn’t perfect, we are still getting a lot wrong in that area. We are scoring a lot of tries but I think we can score a whole lot more.”

Barton senses that while results have not gone their way on the whole, the city is behind the sea-change in attitude.

“A couple of times I have been stopped in the streets by fans, and you get fans talking to you as you walk onto the pitch, and they are all so positive about the way we are playing, they can see progress.

“Barton’s cool head under pressure drew comparisons with Tim Smith, a club legend of yesteryear”

“I appreciate that they are obviously going to want us to win, which hopefully we will start doing. We just need to fix up on a few things, we are not far off it.”

Once he is back up and running again, Barton wants to improve further on his 83.3 per cent goal-kicking success rate – preferably with the ball still on the tee – develop his full-back play, and continue to make his family proud.

“I want to create a bit of a weapon with my goalkicking even though it has been going really well so far. I want it to kind of become more of a talking point where teams are like, ‘we can’t give them a penalty inside our half.’ I want to get it to that level.

“And at full-back I want to become really secure and a good ball-playing option for our new attacking system because obviously that’s going to hopefully score us more tries.”

Having a safe pair of hands is in his genes – his grandfather played in goal for Swindon and Cheltenham, while his dad played rugby for England Colts and his mum for England Students. Sister Chloe also played for Worcester and Cheltenham Tigers before injury struck.

Like anyone from Gloucester, rugby is in the blood, and Barton can’t wait until the next time he gets an opportunity to run out in front of The Shed.

“I don’t think you’d find another place like it in the league. Every time I go out, I love it,” he said.

“The fans are amazing, especially with their little chants. Santi has got one, they love chanting Thorler’s name. I haven’t got one, maybe I need to plant someone in the crowd to start one!”

How about his parents? “They’re both Sheddites now and they love it, the fact that I can pull on the shirt, they are obsessed with it.”