Stepping up
Skivington quick to praise Evans and Barton
GLOUCESTER’S head coach George Skivington was quick to praise the strong performance of two men he has put a lot of faith in this season - Lloyd Evans and George Barton after the 38-34 European Champions Cup win over Ulster.
With star fly-half Danny Cipriani departing, the pair of fly-halves who were on the fringes of the first team squad less than a year ago, suddenly find themselves as two of the most important figures at the Cherry and Whites until Scottish international Adam Hastings arrives next summer.
Well, with the brightest spotlight shining on them on Saturday both men performed admirably as Gloucester overcame a 10-point deficit in the final stages thanks to a try from replacement Barton.
And Evans ran his backline for 80 minutes in a way any fly-half should aspire too, but Skivington expressed their performance was no surprise to him, saying: “I thought they did exactly what I thought they would do to be honest with you.
“They’re very focused in training, they both want to develop.
“George is obviously younger than Lloyd, but Lloyd is still a young ten who’s massively keen to develop and (Alex) King he’s got a good hold on both of them and he’s teaching them the tricks of the trade and as I say, they are working extremely hard.”
“So, it’s no surprise to me there that Lloyd managed that game pretty well and then again, no surprise that George comes on, is composed and delivers right at the end.”
In a game with four yellow cards and three penalty tries, it looked like Ulster would return to Ireland with the win, but Gloucester fought to the end which delighted their head coach.
“I think it’s something we’ve talked about, when you’re playing quality teams like Ulster and we’re not going to play a single team this year who’s not a quality team,” Skivington explained.
“You don’t run away with a game and then teams disappear, you might get a little lead like we did but teams will always fight their way back in, you hope they don’t get on top past that point, like they did, but I thought the character, the boys stayed on task.
“There’s a lot of things that we probably haven’t done previously and we’ve talked a lot about but they were organised, they were fighting hard for each other and at the end of the day, they just backed each other up right to the end.”
A bonus point victory, as well as a number of games being cancelled this weekend due to Covid-19 outbreaks has opened the door for Gloucester to qualify for the knock-out stages, however Skivington explained that he won’t be changing his plan.
“I mean, I’ve got to be honest, I’ve got a look at how the results line up and what’s been cancelled,” he admitted.
“I was very focused on Ulster this weekend and very focused on delivering a performance, so as I say, I’m not really going, this has happened, we’re in it now, we’ll change our plan.
“We are very much attacking every game and selecting people as we see fit, so nothing really that’s going on around us is affecting anything we were doing.”
The 2,000 fans in attendance were treated to an early Christmas present and despite minimal numbers, the Kingsholm faithful roared like the ground was full to the brim.
“I’ve said it a few times, but I’m very proud to be here and I’m privileged to experience 2,000 people, I can’t wait to see it full,” Skivington said.
“But it is a special place and you can tell that with 2,000 people and like you say it sounds like there was 15,000 screaming the house down and I just hope we gave them a sort of a glimmer of what we’re capable of, we’ve had a couple of performances which haven’t quite shown that and certainly not showing it for 80 minutes.
“But as I say, I’m very privileged to be here.
“I’m really enjoying the experience of getting to know everybody involved in Gloucester and the more supporters I get to meet and hopefully give them more good days than bad days.”