Ahead of their clash with the Northampton Saints at Franklin’s Gardens on Saturday George Skivington explained the biggest things he’s learned during his time as head coach:
“I’ve learnt a huge amount, I think there is genuinely loads I’ve learnt. The reality of how quickly you can put plans in place, you obviously spend a lot of time with the coaching staff and senior players, how do we want to shift the club? How do we want to play? What do we feel our strengths are? All of these sort of discussions, and you put them down on paper and naturally little bits evolve as you learn more about your squad and more about your coaches.”
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Skivington was appointed Gloucester head coach last June after Johan Ackermann left the role in pursuit for a coaching job in Japan.
The Gloucester boss continued to confess: “It takes time to really understand each other and how to press each other’s buttons, and how to get the best out of each other.
“I suppose one of the biggest learnings for me is how much time it takes to implement everything and we have gone at it pretty ruthlessly to implement everything.
“It’s a harsh reality that’s you want to see it in a couple weeks and you want to address one thing and move on to the next thing and try and do everything, but it doesn’t work like that. I think we’ve got to a point now where the understanding of what we are trying to do is very good.
“We’ve still got a long way to go before we are near what we think we can do.”
After a difficult start to the season the Cherry and Whites sit just two places above the bottom of the Gallagher Premiership table, but after impressive victories over second place Exeter and third place Sale Skivington’s side can take a lot of confidence going into the final five games of the season and begin to build for next season.
