Bath's Prem humilation: 'There is a deathly silence in the changing room'

Bath head coach Neal Hatley has said there was a ‘deathly silence’ in the changing room after his side were humiliated in their West Country derby with bitter rivals Gloucester.

The Cherry and Whites’ 10-try, 64-0 victory at Kingsholm eclipsed their 68-12 home success against Bath in 2002.

The defeat left Bath at the foot of the table. They finish their campaign at Worcester in a match which is likely to decide who will finish 13th.

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“There is a deathly silence in the changing room,” said head coach Neal Hatley. “It is all the worse because of the opponents we were playing.

“We will have to look at ourselves as a group of coaches to see how we are preparing the players. They take our lead and they are way better than what happened today.

“I thought we defended well for the first 20 minutes when we had 14 men and we had a try disallowed. After that there was little and there are no excuses for that.

“I through our captain Charlie Ewels put in a sensational performance in the circumstances, never taking a backward step, but overall it showed how big confidence is. I do not think the threat of relegation would have made any difference. We just struggled to deal with Gloucester.”

George Skivington celebrated Gloucester’s biggest Gallagher Premiership victory all the more because it came against West Country rivals Bath but said there was more to come from his side.

Skivington did however admit he felt his side got away with a slow start.

“We got over the line three times without scoring, but we then played some superb rugby,” he said. “It was all the more pleasing because it was against Bath in a meeting between the two oldest rivals in the Premiership.

“What delighted me most was that we stopped them from scoring. To nil someone in the Premiership is massive and all credit to Dom Waldouck our defensive coach for the work he has put in.”

The victory took Gloucester to fifth in the table, one point behind Northampton with two matches to play – at Harlequins and at home to Saracens, the side they face on Friday night at Kingsholm in the European Challenge Cup quarter-finals.

“If you want to win something you have to play good teams,” added Skivington. “We will find out over the next three matches whether we are going to get to where we want to be, but as I have said before we are not the finished article.

“There are a few sides who are ahead of us, but what we have here is a great togetherness which you saw again today. We had a tough end to the match at Bristol last week and the boys responded superbly.”