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'I didn’t really appreciate it until I got a punch in the gut'
By Liam Heagney
George Skivington was blindsided when told earlier this week that his survival as Gloucester boss for the 2024/25 season meant he is the longest-serving person in over 30 years in charge of picking the Kingsholm club’s team. If this statistical revelation heading into his fifth season at the helm represented a feather in his cap, he didn’t let it show.
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It’s no mean feat, though, that the reins are still in his hands following a tumultuous fourth campaign where Gloucester were abjectly tailed off in ninth place in the 10-team Gallagher Premiership with just five wins in 18 matches. To be blunt, three of Skivington’s four full seasons as boss have been miserable misadventures.
Having won four of the nine post-resumption matches in the delayed 2019/20 season after he arrived from being a London Irish assistant to take charge of the Cherry and Whites during the lockdown, his maiden campaign ended in 11th place in a 12-team league after seven wins and 15 losses.
There was also a 10th place finish in 2022/23 in an 11-team comp after seven wins and 13 losses, meaning his only ‘successful’ Premiership was fifth in the 13-team 2021/22 edition where 13 games were won, one drawn and 10 lost. All that leaves him with an overall Premiership record of 36 wins, one draw and 56 defeats, a 38.7 win percentage in 93 top-flight outings that doesn’t quite match the ambition of the vociferous Gloucester fans that pack out Kingsholm.
What ‘saved’ Skivington was his foresight in writing off early the 2023/24 league and instead throwing everything into the cups, a tactic that saw them win the Premiership Rugby Cup – the club’s first silverware since 2015 – and take part in the EPCR Challenge Cup decider.
That was enough to guarantee the 41-year-old being around for the start of his fifth season in charge, but he realises he now much to do to become a legendary director of rugby similar to the longevity enjoyed by Exeter’s Rob Baxter and Saracens’ Mark McCall. What makes a successful director of rugby? “I’d definitely think having a plan and getting the culture the way you want it,” Skivington told RugbyPass ahead of a season that will start with the September 21 Premiership game at home to Saracens.
“When I say the way you want it, I mean an aligned vision and you have got to have the players on the journey with you, that is for sure. Like you talk about the people leaving, you have got to have people who want to be here and want to play for Gloucester. There are always dramas and things in the background.
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“The biggest thing is staying true to yourself and making sure the building is honest, that there are lots of honest conversations. There are challenges always around what you can and can’t say to the group around bits and pieces but if I could live last year again there is probably a couple of times a couple of conversations I would like to have that maybe we didn’t have because there was a lot of drama going on.
“There was (Louis Rees-) Zammit leaving, there was this Zach Mercer attention, there was a lot of stuff to deal with in the background and maybe a few things slipped through but consistency is key.
“It’s one of those where I’d love to know all the details around Rob and Mark and I am sure they made lots of mistakes along the journey as well but the consistency of your behaviour, your conversations, your training standards, having a core group of players…
“Like, I have talked about this young group who are coming through who I believe will take the club where they want to go, those young lads would probably understand me better than anybody in the building because that is all they have known. They understand where we want to go and how we want to do it.
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“I definitely think consistency in your actions, your conversations is important but also admitting when you are wrong and developing a bit. Last summer was a good reflection piece for me and I was very, very honest with the boys when I came in about where I thought I wasn’t good enough or where I could be better and then that led to them doing the same back to me.
“So the consistency is important. And being true to yourself is ultimately it because you have got a plan that has to adapt as you go along but there were a few times last year I probably strayed from that and if I could live that again, I would just probably have anchored down. I’m not saying it would have made any difference but it would over the long term.”
It was just a few weeks ago at an Exeter pre-season open training day when Baxter extolled how it was a privilege to be a director of rugby given it is a select group of just 10 people in the Premiership following the capitulation of Worcester, Wasps and London Irish. That familiarity doesn’t breed contempt. The opposite is instead the case.
“It’s very good actually,” explained Skivington about his relationships with ‘rival coaches. “Even outside of the Premiership when I have talked with Ronan O’Gara and people like that, you have very good, honest conversations with people because they understand the day-to-day and the reality of it but a lot of stuff goes on behind closed doors, of course it does and everyone understands.
“But within the Premiership, my opinion would be it’s a very good group of DoRs. We’re all meeting up Wednesday actually at Twickenham for the Prem launch and we have really good conversations and it’s a very respectful group.
“If you are in the role you definitely understand some things just go against you. We are all working the same hours and giving it everything we have got and our families make the same sacrifices and it’s very, very tough when things are going against you. We are all aware when things are going for you it’s only a matter of time when you have got to deal with something.
“I get on very well with everybody and there is a good level of respect. That goes out the window for 80 minutes and then it comes back again afterwards. It’s a good group of DoRs. My personal opinion is our conversations are good, respectful and we all respect and understand the stresses that go with it.”
Skivington admitted he is a very different operator compared to the rookie who took up the offer to replace Johan Ackermann as Gloucester boss in May 2020. “I’m very different,” he volunteered without hesitation.
The Cherry & Whites kicked off the 2024/25 season with a win over Munster in Cork this evening.
Report & reaction ??#MUNvGLO | ??
— Gloucester Rugby ? (@gloucesterrugby) September 6, 2024
“I don’t think I could be balder than I was, but definitely any hair I had is gone and I am massively different. There are conversations I relive that I had with people who have done this job. They ring so true as I experienced different thing after different thing after different thing.
“The one thing I can say going into this season is whatever happens I am very clear now on the things that are important, the things that aren’t important, the things that need to be on the backburner until the end of the day whereas I might have been juggling too many bits and pieces around the rugby.
“Again, I’m not sure how you know these things unless you live them because I have been given some absolutely brilliant advice over the years and spoke to a few of those guys and said I appreciate that advice, I didn’t really appreciate it until I got a punch in the gut over this or whatever. So massively different. I’m a lot more mature. I understand the role now and hopefully I will be able to transfer a lot of that over to the boys for this season.”
Despite the multiple losses and setbacks in trying to make Gloucester consistently competitive, does Skivington have a standout happy memory of his time so far in charge? “Is there one moment? I couldn’t pin it down to one moment.
“Obviously, the year we finished fifth we had some really good victories. Amongst the chaos of last year, I thought winning at Welford Road was a really strong moment for us. We had been through the mill. We had won the Prem Cup and there was a lot of emotion behind that because we put a lot into that and we had to win that trophy really.
“That was a fact, and then we had to go to Welford Road the week after playing the team we had just beaten and I was really proud of the lads that day. We just got it right, we anchored in that week on what we were about and what we should do.
“It’s hard to sort of go back through time most present, if I was looking at one game last season, I would say that was the game where I knew we could be on track when we got things right, if that makes sense.”
