‘It’s never dull’: How Gloucester became the Premiership’s great entertainers ...Middle East

KINGSHOLM — The Shed at Gloucester is the most famous terrace in rugby, known for its pithy humour, and here is a good example, when discussing the transformation in the club’s style of play this season.

“It’s never dull, watching Gloucester – apart from last season, when it was incredibly dull,” says Sarah Bradley, a supporter for 30 years, and a season-ticket holder in The Shed for most of those.

The transformation reached a zenith in the 53-28 thrashing of Bristol Bears a fortnight ago, with spectacular tries going viral around the world, and it started as a promise last summer, when Gloucester stuck with George Skivington as director of rugby, and the fans forming the opinion that the club’s finances simply didn’t allow for a change.

And with the revival has come a reconnection, between the team and its supporters.

Bob Rumble, chair of the Kingsholm Supporters’ Mutual, was among the 200 or so who revelled in last weekend’s 24-17 win away to Montpellier in the European Challenge Cup then, late in the evening in an Irish bar in the French city, witnessed the renewal of a tradition as the players turned up unannounced and joined in the mutual singing of The Shed’s favourite ditty “We are the Glos’ter boys”.

Are all the problems solved? Not by a long way, with Gloucester’s 2023-24 accounts announced between the Bristol and Montpellier wins, and showing a pre-tax loss of £2.9m, and the money from the league-wide investment by CVC having run out, and the Covid-survival loan repayments to the government due to kick in this year.

Nothing has been won yet, either, with a tough trip to Bath in this Sunday’s Challenge Cup quarter-final, and just a chink of hope of Premiership glory, with Gloucester fourth in the league and with a decent run-in.

But the transformation and the reconnection are real, and they are traced to an open letter to supporters written by Alex Brown, Gloucester’s chief executive and another ex-lock, last July, which came after a second successive season of finishing second bottom in the Premiership.

“We want to entertain at Kingsholm,” Brown wrote, in a message repeated in person in a fans’ forum. “We want to make you proud of your team.

“We want everyone here to enjoy what they do; we believe that comes with a freedom and license to be creative.”

It was badly needed, because as Bradley tells The i Paper: “Last year was just turgid and dull and brainless and uninspiring, and the atmosphere was dreadful.

“People were unhappy and cross, because it wasn’t entertaining and they weren’t changing things when they were losing. And the general feeling was Skivington needs to go. But the club were very clear that they couldn’t afford to go out and get a big-name coach in.

“It was the first time I thought, ‘shall I renew my season ticket? Because this is dire’. And boy, I’m glad I did.”

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Skivington’s take, when asked by The i Paper this week, is that he used last summer to “make sure we came back with an approach that was going to maximise ‘Lights’ and all the stuff we set in place”, because for various reasons last season had passed Gloucester by.

“Lights” is the Gloucester attack coach James Lightfoot-Brown, recruited from London Irish two years ago, but who has come into his own in the current campaign, freed to do so by Skivington, who says of his own role: “It was about letting people run with their areas, and not reacting and reining in when things aren’t quite going right. I’m doing that better this year, certainly.”

The highlight of the Bristol win was a lavish team try featuring a no-look, overhead basketball pass by Gloucester’s Wales scrum-half, Tomos Williams, who arrived with fly-half Gareth Anscombe and wing Christian Wade last summer.

“I thought the boys earned the right to have a day like that at Kingsholm,” Skivington says. “It was fully sold out, and it was absolutely rocking.”

Long-time supporter Rumble highlights the forwards coming through, including Freddie Thomas, Arthur Clark and Cam Jordan – nurtured by necessity, as money is tight. Of Jordan, a 25-year-old lock out of the Leicester Tigers academy, Rumble says: “He’d be more like Danny Grewcock than Steve Borthwick.

“In Montpellier he made a charge for the line with about 25 or 30 metres to go, and there were two blokes standing in his way. One was Billy Vunipola, and the other was the big number five. And he ran through the big fellow, and he ran through Billy Vunipola, the bloke was down for about 10 minutes, and then the kid scored the try.

“And I really don’t like saying this, because it’s so non Gloucester, but we didn’t look in trouble at all. Everybody stuck exactly to the script, and we ran them ragged.”

Gloucester came back from 14-0 down in Montpellier, and Skivington says he enjoyed how they used the maul – so it’s not all fancy stuff. Defence coach Dom Waldouck is praised by Rumble, too.

But it’s the flick of the ‘Lights’ switch that dominates – Lightfoot-Brown’s determination to get the ball in the hands of the exciting Wade, Seb Atkinson, Max Llewellyn (now injured), Josh Hathaway, Santiago Carreras and the rest.

It needed a different type of fitness to enable playing at pace, and Lightfoot-Brown has said his structure is not dissimilar to Ireland’s.

“It’s not a lucky way we’re playing,” Skivington says.

“They’re very well-drilled by ‘Lights’ in their systems. Timmy Taylor is on their skill development. They’re working hard to earn the right to be in those positions, to have the opportunities.

“And they’re taking them – or if we don’t take them or there’s a mistake, there’s no comeback, no fallout; the only fallout is if you haven’t worked hard enough to get in position.”

Gloucester scored 61 tries in 20 Premiership matches in 2022-23, then 54 tries in 18 last season, with a minus 195 points difference, including a notorious 90-0 loss at Northampton. This season already they have 57 tries in 13 matches, with a points difference of plus 39.

“I do recall Alex Brown banging the drum, firstly with the customary apology for our crap finish last year – sorry, our crap finish every year – but his message is turning out to be prophetic: ‘I am Phineas T Barnum, and we’re gonna entertain you,'” Rumble says.

“And no one who watched the game against Bristol could say they weren’t entertained. [Former Gloucester coach] Laurie Fisher would have packed up and gone home with his Billabong if he saw us run like that instead of box-kicking all the possession away.

“It’s gone from ‘Skivington out’ to you hardly hear anybody criticising anything.”

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Bradley lends The Shed humour to the mention of kicking.

“There was a standing joke last year of ‘are we going for a world record number of box kicks?’” she says.

“I felt like we were being taken for granted, that people like me just renew a season ticket without even thinking about it, and you don’t want the club to think we’re going to turn up, whatever rubbish they throw out. It felt like we were listened to, and they actually acted on it, and you can’t ask much more.

“The club has been pretty honest that they’re not prepared to get into any more massive debt than is realistic. We’ve watched three clubs disappear off the face of the earth. Let’s be glad that’s not us, because it very easily could be.”

Bradley describes those she stands with at home matches as “my Shed friends”, and how “some of them moan and are grumpy, and others are optimistic and happy; one lady who tells us off if you swear too much.

“But you’ve got this camaraderie there, all been going for years, and absolutely loving it this season. It’s just fun again. There’s no bigger high than watching tries like that being run in when you’re stood in The Shed.”

Rumble says: “For one who’s not seen top-four finishes since Philippe Saint-Andre’s days all those years ago, it doesn’t actually matter to me, truthfully, if we finish top four – though it’d be great.”

And Bradley? “I’m very cautiously optimistic, but prepared to be disappointed – and that’s the way it is, as a Gloucester supporter. In one way, it doesn’t matter where they end up – I am back in love with Gloucester rugby again.”

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