Gloucester celebrate their LV= Cup success and are eyeing more silverware
By Charlie Henderson
If you've been consumed by the Six Nations in recent months, feasting on international fare, welcome back to the diet of domestic English rugby.
What has been going on? Leicester are top of the Premiership, Leeds have won one game but remain bottom as Newcastle have also started winning and increased the gap over Neil Back's basement boys from three points to seven.
In the push for the play-offs, Northampton have drifted alarmingly, Bath are on the rise.
But most significantly, and perhaps surprisingly, Gloucester are on the rampage.
The Cherry and Whites are now third in the table, six points clear of Saints in fourth, and have two games in hand on Leicester and Saracens above them, after a club-record run of 11 wins in a row.
To give that some context, prior to the first match in that sequence at home to Exeter in January, they had lost their previous two games to La Rochelle and Leeds, won 56% of their matches this term and were seventh in the Premiership.
In the last 12 months the most games they had previously won on the trot was three and the record they broke dates almost three decades to the 1981/82 season.
And to cap it all, the famously frail finalists set that new mark at Franklin's Gardens last time out with a victory over Newcastle that landed them LV= Cup silverware.
"That's a monkey off our back," reflected injured club stalwart Peter Buxton after two previous Anglo-Welsh Cup final defeats and repeated play-offs pain.
But their ambitions do not stop there. With confidence and momentum high, it is now time to right the wrongs of those ordeals.
Buxton told BBC Gloucestershire: "We're in a great position in the Premiership and once you're in the top four you can win a semi-final and you're in a final.
"We should have plenty of confidence. We've gone to a final and we've won a final. We can hopefully keep improving, getting better and keep building."
Fellow flanker Andy Hazell added: "It's a small step for us, a little pat on the back for the work we've done, but at the end of May we want a big pat on the back."
That is becoming an ever more realistic possibility, but how do you explain the turnaround in form? After all, last season they finished seventh to equal their worst previous finish in the Premiership and they have set this record with a host of players largely absent.
Skipper Mike Tindall has been on England duty, lock Dave Attwood was suspended for nine weeks and strike runners James Simpson-Daniel and Lesley Vainikolo are out with injuries. That quartet have played seven games between them in the winning run.
Six Nations commitments have seen England prop Paul Doran-Jones coming and going from camp along with Scottish trio Rory Lawson, Scott Lawson and Alasdair Strokosch, while another Scotland international, prop Alasdair Dickinson, and flanker Brett Deacon have not figured at all because of injury.
That has forced other experienced players to the fore like lock Jim Hamilton and a back-row unit that has been scavenging and driving opponents to distraction at the breakdown, most notably when in-form Bath visited Kingsholm.
Behind them stand-off Nicky Robinson has been winning rave reviews along with Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu at 12, while out on the wings Charlie Sharples has come of age and former England wing Tom Voyce has been rejuvenated.
Hazell, one of those key men, reasoned one of the crucial ingredients to the success has been the one-for-all, all-for-one friendship that runs through the squad.
"There's characters all over the place and everyone's really good friends," he told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.
"It's a good mix and is one of those things you can't really put your finger on. A lot of boys are moving on next year so we've got to make the most of it this year. The mix is spot on."
There was some very straight talking behind closed doors following the New Year's Day defeat at Leeds and beyond that hard work is the simple dictum you hear from the squad. Head coach Bryan Redpath, who has used 36 players in the run, repeatedly hails the collective and their work ethic.
Following the LV= Cup final victory, the diminutive Scot did stray from that path though by praising man of the match Robinson, one of those players who have signed for other clubs next season along with Attwood and Doran-Jones.
Redpath told BBC Radio Gloucestershire: "For the last 10 weeks Nicky's been outstanding. It's always difficult when people leave but I'm chuffed for him and he's carried himself impeccably."
Robinson has been running the show with Fuimaono-Sapolu in midfield, but the Welshman is quick to pass the credit elsewhere.
"It helps massively that the squad is playing so well," he told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.
"Playing behind a forward pack that is giving you good line-out ball and good solid scrum ball makes a job for a 10 very easy and I owe a lot of credit to them, and Eli outside is playing some awesome stuff.
"It's a team effort. An outside half can't play well without getting good ball from everybody else."
The Welshman is not surprised by the turnaround.
"I don't think we were far off earlier in the season," he added. "We went well at Bath away with a strong performance and there were some good ones at home. We just weren't clicking in certain areas.
THE WINNING RUN IN NUMBERS
11: Games
6: Matches at Kingsholm
52: Tries
387: Points
36: Players used
9: Most starts (Charlie Sharples and Olly Morgan)
1: Mike Tindall appearances
2: Yellow cards
10: Tries by Charlie Sharples
11: Appearances by Will James and Olivier Azam
"We picked up some confidence-boosting big wins in Europe and in the LV and that's kicked on with some of our away form, beating Northampton and Wasps in real difficult conditions. That shows the steel and the grit we've got in the squad."
Hamilton takes up the baton in identifying those two tight, grinding wins in wet and wild weather as crucial, as well as an increasing clarity of vision and discipline.
"There's been hard work, clarity in what we've been trying to do and the fact we've been able to perform away from home in horrendous conditions," said the Scot, who arrived at the club in the summer.
"Speaking to the guys and the coaches, performing away from home has been a problem before, but we adapted to the conditions really well and to get those wins was huge for us.
"And discipline is something we've worked on. Early on in the season our discipline let us down but we've worked hard at that."
The statistics back that up, with 13 yellow cards in the 13 games prior to December and just two in the 14 outings since.
And the LV= Cup final win was a prime case study of Gloucester's belief and game management in 2011.
The focus on discipline was rewarded by coughing up just two penalties which the Falcons lined up at the sticks and they were confident enough to revert to the basics and rely on Robinson's suffocating kicking to the corners when things were getting tough, as they will undoubtedly in the coming weeks.
Dangers lurk on the path to the play-offs, starting at Harlequins on Saturday, where the hosts have not lost in the Premiership since the first game of the season and where Gloucester have not won since September 2006.
Potential pitfalls lie in a spell of three games in eight days against Leicester, Northampton and Saracens in the second half of April which will test the squad's strength and stamina.
And win or lose, the LV= Cup finalists in each of the last two years have all experienced a drop in results.
But you sense Redpath and his squad will not be letting that happen with winning records and springtime silverware already firmly cast in the shadow of the campaign's primary Premiership goal.
"Our target all season has been the Premiership," Redpath told BBC Radio Gloucestershire. "That's been the main focus and that can sometimes get derailed a little bit by winning something.
"But we've said let's move on and forget about it. It's great, but it's not the end of the season and we've seven games left. It's huge.
"We've a great record that's gone on for 11 games, but that will end one day and as long as that's not driven by us then I'm comfortable losing that record. As long as it's done by a team that actually plays better than us on the day I can cope.
"You have to be realistic and keep working hard and if that hard work is harnessed with honesty then you just never know."
E-mail this to a friend 
Printable version 
~RS~a~RS~Domestic~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~30~RS~" height="1" width="2" alt="" /></p loading=)
Bookmark with:
What are these?