Dan Murphy: Gloucester Hartpury got 'monkey off the back' with Trailfinders defeat

Gloucester Hartpury‘s Head of Rugby, Dan Murphy, stated that his team’s first defeat in almost 18 months is a “monkey off the back” for the three-time Premiership Women’s Rugby champions.

On Friday night the Circus lost 41-39 to Trailfinders Women as the English top flight returned after a two-month hiatus for the Guinness Women’s Six Nations.

The three-peat champions had not lost since November 2024 when Bristol Bears left Kingsholm Stadium with a surprise 19-14 win.

Ahead of Friday’s fixture, Gloucester Hartpury had picked up 14 try scoring bonus points from 14 matches and they did still exit Friday’s fixture with two bonus points.

At full-time their Head of Rugby was quick to say that his team were never aiming for an unbeaten season.

“I have been asked this question [about the unbeaten run] a lot lately, ever since someone mentioned that Arsenal had done it about 20 years ago,” Murphy told BBC Radio Gloucester.

“I have always said that this was never something we were going after as a group. This team want to get better as a team and help those around them so that we perform well.

“We have a lot of that to do this week but the monkey is off our back now, so away we go.”

Senior Gloucester Hartpury players Zoe Stratford and Natasha ‘Mo’ Hunt will miss the remainder of the season with pregnancy and injury.

The Women’s Rugby World Cup winning captain will leave the West Country at the season’s end to join Sale Sharks alongside Tatyana Heard and Friday night’s stand-in skipper Sarah Beckett.

After this Sunday’s season finale against second-bottom Bristol Bears, Gloucester Hartpury will host Trailfinders at Kingsholm in their PWR semi-final.

“Ealing [Trailfinders Women] have just shown the rest of the league how to beat us and we need to stop them doing it again,” Murphy said.

“It was a helter-skelter week, bringing everyone back in together after such a long time apart, but we are disappointed to lose the game in the matter we did.

“To come back and get two points off that game was brilliant and showed what we can do, but need to work out how we get better from today.”