George Skivington: Gloucester under ‘pressure’ in ‘massive’ Northampton game

When the Premiership resumed after a two-month break in March, Gloucester were third in the table.

But defeats by Bath and Saracens dropped them out of a tight race at the top and their hopes received a major hit two weeks ago when they were beaten 38-19 by Harlequins to leave their fate out of their hands.

“We’d love to be able to have a shot at it, there’s always going to be a few results you look at and go ‘we could have made life a bit easier’,” Skivington said.

Whatever the result on Saturday, their league campaign has still been a marked improvement on the past two years, when Gloucester finished 10th out of 11 in 2022-23 and ninth out of 10 last season.

They implemented a new, more expansive style of play last summer and have often proved one of the most exciting attacking outfits in the Premiership with their 535 points scored significantly more than the 400 of last season.

“I think we’ve been brave enough to try something different, to push it in a different direction. It’s not been perfect – there’s always bits you look at and go ‘if we’d done this, if we’d done that’ and that’s the beauty of it,” Skivington said.

“There’s bits that we’ll definitely next year want to get better at to support the good work we’ve done this year.

“But overall I’ve been really pleased with everyone in this building. Now we’ve just got to finish the job off, control what we can and focus on this game – whatever happens, try and have a good day at Kingsholm.”