Glaws prepare for the final big push

It looks as if Gloucester will be making a return trip to Vicarage Road to play Saracens in the Premiership play-off semi-final, but nobody at Kingsholm can afford to take anything for granted as the players and the club regroup for their final regular game a week on Saturday.

The Kingsholm clash with Sale will finally decide the end-of-season placings, but all the odds suggest Glaws will finish third and earn a return against Saracens and a chance for revenge after last weekend’s heavy defeat there.

The blank fortnight between games comes as a welcome relief for a Glaws squad that showed signs at Watford of suffering from three games in eight days.

Coach Bryan Redpath admits that last weekend Glaws simply weren’t good enough, but even though he also says his team is not yet the finished article, that doesn’t mean he and the players will be going back there expecting another bad result.

The break gives the players time to recover from battered bodies and to get their minds right for at least two more games – and hopefully three.

Redpath insists the Sale game must come first in the minds of everybody in cherry and white.

He told the Citizen: “We now know what we've got to do to qualify.

"Sale is massive, we've got to finish the season properly, before we get into any discussions about play-offs.

"If we go back to Vicarage Road, Saracens wouldn't change much from that performance, and we now know what we need to do.

"Going back there doesn't frighten me and the players won't be frightened either.

"They showed their hand with their strongest side, and I think we should be confident that we can go wherever we need to and succeed in a play-off position.”

Positive words from the coach, and of course he’s quite right to look on the bright side. If Glaws aren’t yet the finished article, the team and the squad he wants them to be, then there is a case for claiming that by probably finishing third they have over-performed this season.

Redpath added: I'm extremely proud of what these players have achieved so far this year, and let's not stop at that.”

It’s now a test not only of the strength of the Glaws squad, but also of the squad’s bottle and appetite for success.

And just in case, at the end of a season when luck hasn’t always been on their side, they could do with a bit of that as well.