Gloucester Rugby travel to London Irish for Round 5 of the Gallagher Premiership on Sunday. Ahead of the fixture, Head Coach George Skivington talked about last week’s win, the trip to London and the impact of fans.

On the Sale Sharks victory

“The boys did really well up to about 75 minutes. I think there’s a good lesson and a strong reminder of how competitive the Premiership is and how you’ve got to play for 80 minutes and that the game is never dead. We’ve been very reflective on that and I think we have a really competitive group of players who desperately want to start.

“I think there was a little bit of over eagerness from a couple of the lads who came on and pushed too hard trying to make a statement that they are desperate to wear the badge. It comes from a good place, but we know as a group that we’ve got to do better.”

On getting five points from such a tight game

“Five points is as much as you can take and we’re very happy with that and we would have taken that before the game. It gives us a bit of confidence, but the biggest thing is that all the things that we’ve been working really hard on have started to come to fruition.

“I do still feel that there is a long way to go and we want a lot more out of it than we got on Saturday. From that point of view, it’s good to see the processes that the boys are working on coming through.”

On the success of the maul

“It’s a real strength of ours and we talked a lot about it in pre-season. Traditionally, Gloucester Rugby has been a physical team up front. We know that’s what the supporters like to see and the boys want to give it to them.

“It was really nice to do it at home and show the supporters that grunt up front and we feel we have another level in that as well. We want to make it a super super strength.”

On London Irish

“Irish are littered with internationals in their squad, and they’ve probably got more test caps in their starting 15 than any other Premiership side. There are a lot of quality players who can do quality things in the game and score tries out of nothing.

“We know there are a lot of threats across the board. They’ve fallen short by a score in most of their games so they will be desperate to win and we know the quality that is there so we are preparing as best we can for that.

“As in previous weeks, the focus is very much on us. We’ve done some good stuff the last couple of weeks, but we just feel that we can get better. We’ll focus on our processes whatever the result, as long as we keep getting better as the season goes on.”

On Gloucester Rugby’s fans

“Our travelling support is outstanding. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s great when the boys pull up on the bus and we can see all the red tops. To hear the noise, it was like being at a home game even though we were away from home.

“Hopefully we’ll have plenty of numbers at London Irish and we look forward to seeing them there.”

Skivington on facing a London Irish side "full of threats"

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