George Skivington on his online critics, CEO’s vote of confidence

Under-fire Gloucester boss George Skivington has reacted to recent online criticism and the vote of confidence he received at the start of this week from club CEO Alex Brown. The Cherry and Whites were humiliated last Saturday at Northampton, losing 0-90 in a damaging 14-try defeat.

Multiple fans described the Franklin’s Gardens loss as the final straw in a miserable campaign where they have won just four of their 17 Gallagher Premiership matches, leaving them a trailed-off ninth in the 10-team competition.

Gloucester, though, will feature in the EPCR Challenge Cup final versus the Sharks on May 24, looking to add a second trophy to their Premiership Rugby Cup they won in March – the club’s first silverware since 2015.

That upcoming final at Tottenham was the reason why Skivington decided to send an understrength team to Northampton, but the dubious manner of the loss has seen him come under pressure from fans.

The coach, who lives locally in Gloucester, admitted he isn’t on social media but is aware of what has been said. “There is a very good media team here so I am kept up to date on everything,” he explained.

“But let’s be real about social media in my humble opinion, if we finished seventh in the league it wouldn’t be too pleasant either.

“The scoreline this weekend is not pretty but you have got to do what you think is right and we made that decision. I am disappointed with the margin; I really thought we would be minimum competitive.

“I won’t be joining social media anytime soon, that’s for sure, but I am kept up to date and I understand why people are upset. I’m not dismissing that at all.

"But there are a lot more layers to what goes on in a rugby club than simply what ends up out at the weekend. That is what I deal with in the background.

“Some weeks we have fallen short in the Premiership; we have fallen short too many times. That’s going to be under review in the off-season, for sure.

"We have recruited well to be stronger in the areas that let us down earlier in the year and I have got to do a really good off-season review and work out how we are more competitive in the Premiership next year, which I am very confident we will be.

“I don’t begrudge anyone their opinion. That’s not a drama to me. But I just stay focused on what I have got to do and I live in the zone of Gloucester rugby every day. I just do what I think is best.”

Switching to the support given to him by CEO Brown during a BBC Radio Gloucestershire interview, Skivington added: “These decisions we make we all make together. I don’t make decisions and run off on my own and go, ‘This is what we are doing’.

“We weigh up the risk of this could happen and this could happen. Again, none of us saw Saturday happening but we evaluate where we are, we work within the constraints we have and we go, ‘Right, we can go after this, this and this.

“What is absolutely certain is you cannot roll your strongest team out every single week and think you can compete in all competitions because you won’t. We are certainly not in that position, but neither are the most well-funded, well-resourced teams in the Premiership.

“If we just kept rolling out the same lads, we would find ourselves very mediocre in every tournament. From that point of view, I don’t think that is going to give anybody any feel-good.”