Expectations are high Gloucester aiming to stay on an upward curve
THERE is a growing expectation around Gloucester heading into the 2022/23 Gallagher Premiership, from the wider rugby public but from within the club as well.
Club captain Lewis Ludlow, is battling to be fit for the Cherry and Whites’ Round One game of the new league season against Wasps on Sunday after three operations in the off-season.
Gloucester narrowly missed out on the play-offs last year, finishing fifth in the standings but with their highest points tally in 14 years - albeit with two more games in the calendar due to the Premiership expanding to 15 teams.
With the arrival of new signing Albert Tuisue and with the return of Jake Polledri, who made his first appearance for the club in nearly two years on Friday as Gloucester United - the club’s development side - in a 44-7 loss to Hartpury at Kingsholm, they are looking to kick on to become serious title contenders.
Following the United game, the first team completed a strong pre-season campaign with a 42-17 victory over Cardiff to add to a win away in Munster a week earlier. And Ludlow is looking for his side to continue that form and kick on.
He said: “We had a lot of people saying we overachieved last year when in reality, we think we underachieved with the games we lost and the games we should have won.
“So it’s definitely fuelled us that we want to right a few wrongs and get ourselves in that play-off situation.
One of those wrongs came at the hands of Wasps who won 27-22 at Kingsholm back in April, stealing a lineout 5m out in the dying moments to deny Gloucester a chance to launch their now infamous maul.
Ludlow added: “We’re still building. There was an opportunity there for the play-offs but with Skivs (director of rugby George Skivington) only having been in for 18 months, we’re still building and on the up hopefully.”
Meanwhile, having built the foundations since arriving in 2020, Skivington is looking to get his star-studded backline, with the likes of Scotland ace Chris Harris, Welsh phenomenon Louis Rees-zammit, Argentina star Santi Carreras and England’s second all-time highest try scorer Jonny May into the game more often and tearing sides apart.
Skivington said: “We’ve got some of the best back three players in world rugby, so we want to see them scoring tries and that’s an objective for this year.
“Obviously our maul was hugely dominant and we scored a lot of tries off that but in the first half of the season we probably didn’t create enough opportunities to maximise some of the talent we’ve got on the field.
“We were getting there towards the end of the season but probably in the first half of the season we relied heavily on the set piece though we got some good results out of that.”
In the win over Cardiff, Jack Singleton scored the opening try, Hastings adding the extras.
Ruan Ackermann, with Hastings’ conversion, made it 14-0 ahead before Ben Morgan crashed over twice, from close range, Hastings converting both, for 28-0.
Jack Reeves scored a length-of-the field interception try, converted by Hastings before Christian Dasey got the visitors on the scoreboard.
Aled Summerhill added a second Cardiff try, then Reeves scored his second try, Hastings converting, before Jason Harries scored a third Cardiff try, which was converted.
Arthur Clark was the try scorer in the United’s loss against Hartpury, with George Barton converting.