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George Skivington labels Leicester Tigers defeat “disappointing” as Gloucester Rugby stay 11th in the Gallagher Premiership

Leicester Tigers beat Gloucester Rugby 20-14 at Kingsholm in Round 13 of the Gallagher Premiership on Saturday.

The Cherry and Whites’ head coach, George Skivington, labelled the defeat as “disappointing” and the result sees the Gloucestershire side stay 11th place in the league.

Despite the defeat, Gloucester scored two tries through Santiago Carreras and Ed Slater but were ultimately out played by Leicester who scored through Tom Youngs, Dan Kelly and Harry Wells.

“It was very disappointing,” Skivington said. “I think we were out muscled at the maul if you want to put it down to one thing. They scored a couple of maul tries and we had our chance at the end and we didn’t take it.”

Gloucester Rugby had a chance to steal the win at the death with a late penalty at the scrum. However, Leicester dealt with the late surge well and turned the ball over therefore ending the Cherry and Whites’ hopes.

“They play a kicking game plan and they executed it really well,” the head coach said. “We knew it was coming and we hoped to deal with it better than we did but they play the territory and then they squeeze you at the set piece and with good defence. We didn’t manage to get on top of that today.”

It looked like Gloucester Rugby were struggling at half time but came out after the break with real intent, getting over the try line through Ed Slater within minutes.

“We had a word at halftime, we weren’t happy about how the first half went in terms of the scoreboard and the boys came out and reacted really well and scored a nice early try,” Skivington said. “The next chances we had to get on top we probably just weren’t quite quick enough at the breakdown and it killed out momentum.

“We’ve had a couple of good weeks. This won’t change our plan going forward. It’s disappointing right now and it’s not the way we wanted it to play out but it’s a good experience for the young guys on the field. It’s a different game of rugby to the ones we’ve come across over the last few weeks. It was tough and gritty and we feel away with some of the simple stuff.”

Gloucester are back in action next weekend when they travel to Harlequins and the side are looking forward to the different challenge they will face.

“Quins is going to be a really tough challenge,” he said. “I think they’re one of the form teams and they play a very different game to what we saw today. We can expect to be challenged fitness wise. We’re looking forward to it. We’ll deal with this on Monday and focus on Quins on Tuesday and look forward to getting stuck in.”

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