George Skivington: Gloucester's young players 'ready' for Premiership campaign says boss

Full-back Reece Dunn scored his first try for Gloucester during their win over Nottingham

Gloucester have a new "exciting" generation of young players ready for this season's Premiership, says director of rugby George Skivington.

The Cherry and Whites won their first game of the Premiership Rugby Cup 42-14 against Championship side Nottingham.

Ten of their matchday squad had never made a Premiership appearance, while another five players had no more than three top-tier games to their names.

They next face Premiership champions Saracens in the cup on Saturday.

"There's a lot of young players within this squad that we've now been working with for three years and I think we're starting to see they're young men now," Skivington told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.

"I think they understand the system, they understand the standards we have at the club and they respect that. I've said they're very exciting for the last three years but I think now they're at a point where they're Premiership ready.

"Now they've got to go out there and show us they're Premiership ready. There's combinations that need to show us they're going to work together."

With the start of the 2023-24 Premiership season delayed until 13 October due to the World Cup, Skivington said he aims for all players to get game time during the five cup matches they have over the next six weeks.

"We've opted not to have warm-up games because we feel like it's going to be a long run of games from here on in so ultimately we want to get as many people out there playing so we can view the whole squad and know where all the younger players are at," Skivington said.

"But also we want to go and play good rugby and we want to win games so it's a real tricky balance."

Gloucester bolstered their coaching line up this season with the addition of James Lightfoot Brown as attack coach.

Skivington said there are already signs of the impact he has been having based on the six tries scored against Nottingham.

"It wasn't absolutely perfect and we probably didn't get a few bits right but I thought the precedent they set was very, very exciting," he added.

"When it came off it looked very sharp and we scored some really good tries.

"I think the boys are excited from having a crack within the new system and getting some joy but I think the thing is we've got a long way to go and there was plenty of moments within that game where there were opportunities we didn't take and obviously the objective this year is to take a lot more of those."