Hopes Fade

Gloucester's hopes of a play-off place now look very slim after Tigers won the Ed Slater Cup showdown at Kingsholm 26-5 with all the points coming after the break . 

Things are so tight in the truncated league that a win for Gloucs would have leapfrogged them over Tigers. Instead, it was the visitors who moved up to fifth leaving the Cherry and Whites third  bottom.

All is not quite lost. Gloucs have four games still to play with a game in hand on Tigers and Saints who currently occupy third and fourth. Realistically they would need a maximum haul of 20 points to stand any chance of achieving that Top 4.

With all that at stake it was no surprise the first half was a tight affair with defences on top.

The first try then went to veteran Mike Brown with Julian Montoya going over from close to the line to give Tigers a 12 point lead.

Jonny May did get Gloucs back in the game. However, Ben Youngs restored TIgers' advantage and salt was rubbed in the wound when Jasper Wiese got Tigers' bonus point with the last move of the game.

Ed Skivington's after match comments to the media were frank

 "It's a big loss for us and makes it extremely difficult, but I don't think we should be talking about the play-offs and more about playing better.

"I thought we played really well in the first half and actually created more than I thought we would. We didn't see the ball in the second half or get a foothold, and the boys they brought on really made an impact. We made mistakes and they punished us, which we didn't do to them in the first half."

"We wanted to make a statement for Ed and I think we did that in terms of physicality, effort and work-rate, but we just weren't clinical enough."