Quins boss Jason Gilmore: 'No-one is liking it but we have to face reality'

George Skivington insisted Gloucester’s refreshed identity began to take shape in their determined 26-19 Gallagher Prem victory at Harlequins.

Set-piece dominance and a strong finish culminated in Arthur Clark barging over for the match-winning try in the 73rd minute to complete the league double over Quins this season.

The two clubs are locked in a battle for eighth place and the final Champions Cup spot that comes with it, but Gloucester currently sit five points clear of their rivals, who are now looking over over the shoulders at basement club Newcastle.

Chris Boyd, the veteran Kiwi coach who oversaw Northampton’s revival, has joined the club as technical director and Skivington believes a strong finish to the season is possible after the break for the Six Nations was used to outline their new goals.

“Before the recent Prem Rugby Cup spell, a couple of us coaches went over to Toulouse to watch them train and spend a bit of time on what we’re going to go after for the rest of the season,” head coach Skivington said.

“We’re realistic that there’s only so much we can do in the league, so we want to get as many points as we can and climb as high as we can.

“We want to make sure that in these last eight games we look like what we want to look like, we go after what we want to go after and play some good rugby.

“We’ve been clear on what we want to go after and against Harlequins, the boys did a good job for the most part. It wasn’t perfect, but the forwards were really, really good in the set-piece.

“I’ve always taken a lot of pride in set-piece but in the last 18 months with us pushing our attack, we’ve dropped off there and we’ve been average.

“So the forwards have worked hard very hard on it over the last couple of months and we got a bit of pay out there when we needed it.”

Harlequins have not won in the Prem since defeating Newcastle on October 25 and their whole season hinges on the Champions Cup with their round of 16 tie against Sale in a fortnight the next assignment.

Quins interim head coach Jason Gilmore said: “We are where we are for a reason. We know where we want to get to.

“We have a plan and structure we feel will get this club to back where it needs to be, but it’s going to take hard work. No-one is liking it but we have to face reality.

“The three things we want to do is still dream big in Europe. We have Sale in two weeks at home which is massive in terms of the play-offs.

“We can have a massive go to get into the quarters. We want to finish outside the bottom two in the league.

“But most importantly we want to use this three months to get as good as we can before we hit the pre-season. We don’t want to meander through the rest of the season.”