Gloucester defend ‘excellent coach’ George Skivington after 90-0 humiliation
Gloucester have defended head coach George Skivington after the club’s record 90-0 defeat by Northampton Saints, adding that his future is not up for discussion.
Skivington is under contract until the end of next season, having joined the club midway through the 2019-20 campaign. Gloucester since then have finished seventh, 10th, fifth and 11th in the league, and are currently ninth in the Premiership having only won four out of 17 league matches this season.
The club have however reached two cup finals in an unusual campaign, winning the Premiership Rugby Cup in March and facing the Sharks in the Challenge Cup final later this month at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
With nothing to play for in the Premiership, 13 points behind eighth-placed Leicester Tigers, Gloucester opted to send a weakened side to league leaders Northampton, making 12 changes, and paid the price. Their record loss surpassed the 57-0 defeat by Leinster back in 2022.
Speaking to BBC Radio Gloucestershire the club’s chief executive, Alex Brown, described Skivington as an “excellent coach” while adding that he understood the “frustration” with the team’s performance against Northampton.
“It’s never as simple as ‘change will fix things’, I think we’ve got to look at it as a whole and we will do that over the summer,” Brown said. “We’ve got a busy two weeks – we’ve got to get this European final right. We’re going to have a review but, going into next season, George is under contract and I’m not going to talk about suggestions on anything [to do] with his employment.
“I can say that George is an excellent coach and the group around him, the coaching staff, are also equally excellent. We have a job to do to make sure there is pride within the shirt. I don’t think we saw some of those bits on the weekend and we’ve got to address that for sure.”
Brown added that Gloucester’s depth had been an issue beyond the starting XV, while stressing that the club needed to get more out of the players available.
“We’re trying to run the club sustainably and that does come with its challenges,” Brown added. “The first XV on paper are a competing team – the team underneath that, we need to address that and look at that over the course of the off-season and see if we can improve that. We just need to get more out of the team within the constraints we’ve got.”
