'I’m trying to calm down': Fuming George Skivington threatens to axe players

Gloucester head coach George Skivington was angry with parts of his side’s performance after seeing them comfortably beaten 36-17 by in-form Leicester at Villa Park.

It was Gloucester’s first visit to the Premier League football ground but they blew any chance of making it a fruitful one by conceding 22 points in the opening 16 minutes and were never able to recover.

They did show some spirit to score three times as Leicester became careless and disjointed with the Slater Cup already safely in the bag.

Jamie Blamire, with two, Will Wand, Gabriel Hamer-Webb, Orlando Bailey and Harry Wells were Leicester’s try-scorers, with Billy Searle adding two conversions and James O’Connor one.

Matias Alemanno, Will Joseph and Dian Bleuler scored Gloucester’s tries, one of which Charlie Atkinson converted.

Skivington said: “I’m trying to calm down but if I was picking a team now for next week, there would certainly be some changes in it.

“It was a disastrous first 20 minutes with a couple of key moments whereby individual players chose not to be more challenging in the tackle. There was also an issue at scrum time.

“We were still cutting them open but we dropped too many balls to capitalise so at half-time I told them that there was still hope, but changes were made in the front row and we stressed that we needed to be better defensively in the wide channels.

“After that first 20 minutes we left ourselves with a mountain to climb and it was an insurmountable one, although we did play a lot better in the second half.”

It was a different story in the Leicester camp as their bonus-point success saw them maintain third position in the Prem table with six fixtures remaining as they took their winning run to seven.

Head coach Geoff Parling said: “I’m very pleased as it was a big result on a big occasion.

“We had a great start by dominating territory and possession and play in the right areas of the field.

“However I’m frustrated by the second half as although Gloucester were much improved defensively, I thought we lost control and turned the ball over too much.

“After the first 20 minutes there was a bit of a lull and had we scored one more try early in the second half, we would have really been able put them to the sword.

“It’s difficult to keep intensity up if you have a healthy lead but the very best teams are able to do it by playing for the whole 80 minutes.”