'Until you have lived it and got burned, it’s very hard to react'

Easter time and the living is suddenly much easier than it was last winter for Gloucester boss George Skivington. Having been in charge since the summer of 2020, you’d think he would have seen and experienced it all at Kingsholm and that nothing would escape his attention at this stage.

There’s the rub, though: as a director of rugby, you are always learning and some invaluably tough lessons were endured in recent months by the 41-year-old who is four seasons into his first head-of-club Gallagher Premiership job.

Gloucester damagingly lost nine on the bounce in the league between the end of October and the start of January and Skivington has now openly admitted that the buck stopped with him, claiming he didn’t react to the warning signs quickly enough.

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The Cherry and Whites had started the season with a bang, winning their opening two matches, but that encouraging beginning was followed by a rapid downturn in results.

Saracens, Sale, Bath, Exeter, Leicester and Bristol all had their way with Gloucester, but it was only when driving home embarrassed from Ashton Gate on December 2 after a 26-51 hammering that Skivington finally had the epiphany that resulted in him grabbing hold of the situation.

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A Challenge Cup break followed and while the losing streak returned when the Premiership resumed over the holiday period with Gloucester losing three more league matches, their performances considerably improved. Winning again was only a matter of time.

They eventually gave the Sharks a bloody nose on January 28 and having won the Premiership Rugby Cup final versus Leicester – the club’s first silverware since the 2015 European Challenge Cup – they tamed the Tigers for a second time last weekend back in the league. Next up are the Bears, who come calling at Kingsholm on Saturday in round 14.

Adrift in ninth place with just five rounds of matches left, the upturn has come too late for Gloucester to realistically fight their way back into the play-offs as Exeter, who were the fourth and last semi-final positioned team heading into this weekend, were on 40 points, 14 points better off than Skivington and co.

What the gap highlights is that the director of rugby left his squad down by insisting they kept playing the same way during November despite losing key style-setting players to injury. He didn’t tinker with the approach soon enough and the cost was heavy, something he now regrets.

Asked by RugbyPass to reflect on the winter crisis that engulfed Gloucester and hemorrhaged their play-off chances, he said: “After Bristol away, I got in the car and was embarrassed that day – as was everyone else – and I spent the evening just going over and over.

“One of those moments when you just sit back and go, ‘I have missed this, I’ve missed this, I’ve missed this’ and it all just starts rolling in and then you start asking yourself, ‘How have you missed it?

“Then you get the coaches in and say, ‘Listen lads, these are the things we have to go down the route of. In the future when this happens we all need to be on board or flagging this, this and this.’

“It’s good for us as a group, to be honest. We probably needed that hiding to really hammer home where we were going wrong but from my point of view, I would love to have identified that after Sale away four weeks before.

“Now whether or not that is realistic, it will be realistic for me going forward. But it was very much me driving home and sitting at home after that last Bristol game where I realised we had really strayed and look, we came in on Monday and set out for the team what we were going to do.

“From that week on we have been pretty good. We haven’t won them all but I haven’t had a game since then where I have been angry or actually we were off-piste.

“It was very much these are our points, these are what we are going after and that is what the boys have done. Loads and loads of learnings but in terms of that block, which is what is really cost us in the Premiership, that six-week block, I would be pretty confident I would correct that a lot quicker if it happened again.”

Gloucester, for example, were without Zach Mercer, their ball-carrying No8 monster, on that awful day at Ashton Gate and his inclusion is one of eight changes to the starting XV that will take on Bristol in the Kingsholm rematch this Saturday.

The hope is that the real Cherry and Whites will be seen, not the off-colour version that gave up seven tries in the previous derby. “I’ve learned a lot,” continued Skivington, who had a mini spring break away from Gloucester to head coach England A for their February 25 win at Leicester over a Portuguese XV.

“I now understand what this role really entails. I was obviously relatively young and inexperienced when I took the role but this year, although we have had to suffer a pretty tough period, it has probably given me the most clarity I have ever had on what this role is.

“If you took this snapshot from a playing point of view, I would like to have reacted quicker when we lost; it wasn’t necessarily the amount of bodies but the personnel we didn’t have for a period of time.

What a comeback victory for @gloucesterrugby on Friday night with February's #15Under23 #MVP @Stephen9Varney scoring late to win the game!

?@rugbyontnt & @premrugby#ForOurPlayers #PRTVLive pic.twitter.com/fnteDl84St

— The RPA (@theRPA) March 26, 2024

“We tried to keep playing the same game plan that had been going well for us with the bodies on the pitch and ultimately when we talk about these young lads, when you end up forced into certain selections and using your squad in a slightly different way, you have to adapt the way you play sometimes.

“If you have got Zach Mercer on the field you know you are going to get some linebreaks. If you end up losing Zach, Ruan (Ackermann), Val (Rapava-Ruskin), Adam Hastings, all these players, you have got to accept no game plan in the world is going to break down a defence as we had against us last Friday night (at Leicester).

“For me, that is very clear. I was probably four games too slow reacting to that in all honesty. You talk to a lot of mentors, people who have been through it, essentially you can take all the advice in the world but until you have lived it and got burned, it’s very hard to react.

“There is a huge amount of lessons I have learned this year. That would be the glaring one from the point of view of those six games in the Prem’ that we lost back-to-back, week-to-week. But I actually feel very good.

“I feel like it’s given me some real clarity around the roles, given me some real clarity about some bits and pieces of the management where you can’t afford to let too much go or sometimes you trust people with something a little too much and ultimately it’s on your head if that goes wrong and you have got to be on top of that.

“Some tough lessons but it gives you some real clarity on the role, some real clarity if you are going to be at the right end of the Premiership what you are actually going to have to do. You have got to learn and you have got to be humble enough to accept your mistakes and certainly, by the end of the season, I have got real time to reflect.

“The bits and pieces I feel very confident about now, I’m sure there will be lots more. I feel in a good space in understanding what it is to be a director of rugby.”