Playoff hunting Gloucester head north to take on ninth place Newcastle Falcons at Kingston Park in Saturday afternoon’s Premiership clash.
The visitors have enjoyed an impressive campaign that leaves them in fourth on 38 points ahead of the likes of Northampton Saints, last season’s finalists Exeter Chiefs and semi-finalists Bristol Bears.
Last time out in the Premiership, Gloucester were victorious away to Saracens 25-24 courtesy of captain Lewis Ludlow’s decisive score.
George Skivington has made seven changes to the starting 15 that beat USA Perpignan in the Challenge Cup last weekend as Val Rapava-Ruskin, Jack Singleton, Ruan Ackermann, Charlie Chapman, Billy Twelvetrees, Santiago Carreras, and Lloyd Evans all return to the starting line-up.
Skivington is looking forward to the trip up to Newcastle.
The Gloucester head coach said: “Newcastle play some really tough rugby. They work extremely hard and are a tight unit and they are really gritty. They make things really hard, and our record up there isn’t amazing so we know we’ve got to be well prepared and work as hard as we can to stay on task with our game and see where that takes us.”
Newcastle come into the game off the back of a 44-8 thrashing at home to Northampton Saints and director of rugby Dean Richards will be hoping for a response from his team.
Flanker Will Welch captains a team showing six changes from their 17-13 win away to Biarritz in the Challenge Cup two weeks ago.
Argetinian internationals Matias Orlando and Mateo Carreras are added to the back line, with the other changes coming in the forward pack.
George McGuigan starts at hooker as Jamie Blamire is unavailable due to England duty, Sean Robinson returns in the second row and captain Welch is joined by Philip van der Walt in the back row.
Director of rugby Richards said: “We’ve got a team for this weekend, which is good news after last week’s struggles and the cancelled game against Toulon,” said Richards.
“From the middle of December onwards we’ve had 30 people affected by Covid within the squad, so it’s been a difficult month. Just when we thought we were getting out of it we had to go over to Biarritz, and then another ten boys went down with it.
“We’ve had quite a hard month on the back of all that, but we’re coming out the other side now. It’s funny, because as a squad we’ve worked really hard to try not to be affected by Covid too much since the start of the pandemic, and on the occasions where we have had positive tests, we’ve generally been pretty good at containing it and quickly getting those guys isolated.”
Written by Ben Jaycock
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