Bare bones Injuries bite deep into squad ahead of Euro trip
GEORGE Skivington’s plans for Sunday’s opening game of the Heineken Champions Cup away at Lyon have been torn up as Gloucester Rugby have been stricken by injuries in the last week.
Injuries to key men: scrum-half Joe Simpson, fly-half Lloyd Evans and centre Billy Twelvetrees saw the Cherry and Whites lose their structure and lucidity in attack in the second half on Sunday as they went down 24-34 to Harlequins despite the West London visitors playing the final 35 minutes a man down after centre Andre Esterhuizen was red carded for elbowing Evans in the face.
Gloucester were already scrambling ahead of kick-off, announcing three changes to the squad they announced 48 hours earlier, with full-back Jason Woodward, flanker Freddie Clarke and prop Val Rapava-ruskin all failing late fitness tests.
Woodward was replaced in the starting line-up by new signing Kyle Moyle with Jacob Morris coming into the 23 shirt.
Amongst the replacements, Clarke was replaced by Jamie Gibson and Rapava-ruskin by Alex Seville. To make matters worse Matt Garvey dropped out of the starting line up after picking up an issue in the warm-up with Ollie Atkins coming into the squad for the former Bath captain.
Gloucester head coach Skivington said: “We have lost nine players in the last 48 hours in the build-up to this game, we lost three before and we lost Billy Twelvetrees early, Lloyd [in the 45th minute] and Simmo [Joe Simpson] at half time, Jack Stanley as well - this is a long list.
“It definitely hurt us and we ended up with Mark Atkinson (a centre) playing 10, (flanker) Jamie Gibson playing 12, if definitely wasn’t ideal but I won’t make any excuses out of that.
“Rugby is a game where you have got to adapt, people get hurt, get injured, you have got to make the best of what you can and ultimately I thought Harlequin’s half backs managed the game really well and they had great energy as a team.
“They got all the scraps and managed a really smart game.”
He continued: “I thought it was just bad luck with injuries before the game, but that luck continued into the game. We will have to look at the workload on the players and see if we have got that wrong.”
While Skivington will review the club’s training practices there was little he could do about the head knocks received by Simpson and Evans, with the latter failing a HIA after being left bloodied by an elbow to the face from Esterhuizen which earned the South African his dismissal.
Clarifying Simpson’s removal at halftime for the inexperienced Will Flinn with the Cherry and Whites trailing 17-10, Skivington said: “Joe Simpson got a bang on the head when we were defending our line in the first half. He said at half time he didn’t feel too great so we aired on the side of safety and got him off.”
Pre-match eyebrows were raised as star fly-half Danny Cipriani was left out of the matchday 23 for the second week in a row having started in the 10 jersey in the 38-15 defeat to Leicester Tigers in the opening game of the new Gallagher Premiership season.
Asked about Cipriani’s absence, Skivington explained: “Anyone with a niggle who can’t train in the week will not be up for selection at the moment because we are not a team that is where we want to be. We need some momentum and it was the same with Val who could only train the first half of the week.”
As for next weekend, and Europe, Skivington admitted he is going to have to rethink his selection despite the return of Jonny May from England, Louis Rees-zammit from Wales, Chris Harris from Scotland and Stephen Varney with Italy now the Autumn Nations Cup has concluded.
Skivington said: “My plans for the next few weeks are going to change a little bit. We sort of had it mapped out with a relatively fit squad that we had at the start of the week and now we are numbers down so now we are going to have to look at how we approach the game at the weekend.
“The international boys have to have a certain amount of rest as well which has to be managed so it’s a bit of a perfect storm over who can actually play probably.”
Number eight Ben Morgan and England scrum half Willi Heinz could both be back from injury this weekend having not featured for the club yet this season with Skivington revealing both are close.
We have lost nine players in the last 48 hours in the buildup to this game