George Skivington: 'I'm a different coach to two years ago'

As he approaches his 100th Premiership game in charge of Gloucester, George Skivington admits he is a very different coach now compared to his early years at Kingsholm.

Skivington only had four years of experience as an assistant coach at London Irish and was only 37 when he landed the head coach job with the Cherry and Whites in July 2020.

Three years in, the former London Irish lock was asked to become director of rugby, a role which had been temporarily shelved when he first arrived at the club.

Gloucester have kept faith in him throughout, despite last season’s 10-game record losing run and an overall Premiership win record of just 39% (W39, D1, L59).

“For me, I am a very different director of rugby now than I was a couple of years ago. I came in pretty fresh, so I have learnt a lot of things thick and fast. I think what is important and what’s not important is very clear to me now,” he reflected.

“I think we are a very different squad set-up, too, I think we are a little bit further down the line and probably in a better stance to deal with any situations that might have caught us out last time.”

That wasn’t the case at Exeter last weekend when Gloucester became the first team to lose to the Chiefs in the league this season, but Skivington hopes they can quickly turn things around against Sale this Saturday.

Injuries are starting to bite, though, with two of the team’s most impactful ball carriers, Ollie Thorley and Zach Mercer, out for the season and rising prop star Afolabi Fasogbon sidelined for the best part of three months.

Gloucester, however, aren’t in a financially sound enough position where they can bring in expensive replacements and Skivington says the size of squads is another significant change from when he first started with the Cherry & Whites.

“The way budgets and things have changed have been quite different and I manage a lot smaller squad now.

“A couple of seasons ago we could be competitive in the Prem, Europe and Prem Cup. I think that is very, very difficult now. you have got to really pick your moments, pick your battles. You’d love to roll the same team out every week but it is not a reality.”

For Skivington, who coached England A against Portugal last February, success has to be home-grown. “You’re going to have to have a really good academy set-up going forward. If you want to be a sustainable club, as we are targeting to be, your academy has got to produce four or five players a season, to make sure you are ready to go.”

Due to the loss of Worcester Warriors’ and Wasps’ academies, Gloucester’s academy was allocated a significant geographical area, which covers as far north as Shropshire and as far south as Oxfordshire.

To take advantage of the change, more staff were recruited and former Bristol prop Wayne Thompson joined as Head of Academy having done an exceptional job developing talent at nearby Hartpury.

“We have had a complete revamp of the academy this season, we’ve taken over a bigger patch and got a new director of academy and have got some really exciting staff in there. That has to deliver over the next few seasons,” he said.

“For me, that’s probably the biggest change. We’ve always had a big target on growing youth here because of the way we want to run. But I think there will be a number of clubs now if you don’t get your academy right and you’re not bringing through a number of players each season, it is going to be really hard to compete.”