Gloucester Rugby aiming to replicate French giants Toulouse
After a season to forget can Gloucester Rugby really become the UK's answer to Toulouse? It's new coaching team definitely think it could be the way to go.
Dear reader,
A big read all about how one of Gloucestershire’s best-loved businesses, Gloucester Rugby, hopes to reshape itself for the seasons ahead after a torrid 2024/2025 - so far.
Raikes was lucky enough to be allowed to sit in on the latest gathering of the Gloucester Rugby Business Club, sponsored by Willans LLP solicitors, to hear how it hopes to make good after one of its worst seasons in recent history.
Last Friday’s crushing defeat against Bristol Bars was still fresh in everyone’s mind, so it was never going to be anything but a robust conversation.
For a long time sport and business seem to like drawing from one another. If ever there was an example of how a business should face up to its customers and explain itself, this could have been it.
If you’re a fan, hopefully you’ll find something in it to make you feel a little better.
Have a great weekend.
Best regards,
Editor | 07956 926061 | LinkedIn: Andrew Merrell | andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk
Briefing notes…
👨💼 Rob Case has been appointed as managing partner of the Cheltenham-based accountants and business advisers Randall & Payne. Case succeeds Tim Watkins, who steps aside after a decade of leadership. The new managing partner began his journey as a trainee straight from school more than 20 years ago and has developed extensive experience across taxation advisory work, leadership and strategic development. “Our focus will be on investing in our team, improving how we work and ensuring we remain a trusted adviser to ambitious businesses and individuals,” said Case.
🏗️ Gloucester-headquartered Marky Building Services has won the contract to create a £3 million dental school and treatment hub, set to open in the heart of Gloucester. The facility, announced by Raikes last year but now officially agreed between the University of Gloucestershire and NHS Gloucestershire ICB, will be at the university’s City Campus and called the Three Counties Dental School. It’s expected to be operational from 2027.
🏗️ Gloucestershire-based manufacturer Batten & Allen has announced a £500,000 investment in the latest high-speed press technology. The Cirencester-based firm, a specialist in stamping, plating and assembly of high precision parts, has spent the cash on a new BSTA 280-88-B3 machine and it’s already lined up a a major Mexican export order to produce lead frames used in the development of AI chip sets to test out the investment.
🏗️ It looks like spades can finally go in the ground on land to the West of GCHQ to create a development we’re told “will play an important role in strengthening the UK’s leadership in cyber, AI and advanced technologies”. In fact, the publicity says it will become “a globally significant cluster for innovation, driving collaboration and investment from across the world”.
We’re talking about the much-trumpeted Golden Valley Development, of course, the Cheltenham Borough Council scheme - a business park and houses - being brought to life by HBD, part of Henry Boot. The scheme has now officially won ‘reserved matters planning’. Contractor Bowmer + Kirkland was appointed to deliver the project’s first phase, which received resolution to grant outline planning consent in July 2025.
Now, after a long wait, work is expected to start on phase one this year - a 160,000 sq ft building which will help the development “leverage the region’s established strengths in security technology, supporting the clustering of expertise across fast-growing sectors such as cyber, AI and secure communications, while creating an environment capable of attracting global businesses, talent and investment”.
Phase one also includes a transport hub called ROUTER, which will house parking for 453 cars, cycle and e-bike charging facilities.
Things to do this weekend…
Today (Friday)
🎭 Kara Tointon stars in the Royal Shakespeare Company production The Constant Wife, by Laura Wade, based on the comedy by W.Somerset Maugham, directed by Tamara Harvey. From 7.30pm tonight and Saturday. More here.
Saturday:
⚽ Gloucester City FC play Walton & Hersham at home. KO 3pm.
⚽ Cheltenham Town FC play Bristol Rovers at home. KO 3pm.
⚽ Forest Green Rovers FC play Morecambe at home. KO 12.30pm.
Sunday:
🏉 Gloucester Rugby take on Exeter at home. KO 3.30.
Worth knowing too…
💻 Food and drink producers, suppliers, farming and hospitality businesses are being summoned to a meeting at Cheltenham’s Hub8 MX on Thursday 21 May staged by Food For Thought CIC. Lorrin White, the former CEO of Bamboo Technology now head of marketing and development at HCR Law, will give a masterclass on how to use Microsoft 365, how to reclaim your time, increase revenue and efficiency. Subsidised by Made in Gloucestershire, The Growth Hub and Gloucestershire County Council. From 10am till noon. Tickets are £10. More here.
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Gloucester Rugby aiming to replicate French giants Toulouse
After this season you might expect Gloucester Rugby to fall back on what it once knew best – a gritty, physical, forward-dominated style. But French superclub Toulouse is the favoured model.
By Andrew Merrell.
It has been said many times about the lot of the sports fan that “it’s not the despair, it’s the hope that kills you”.
But at last Friday’s Gallagher Premiership match against Bristol Bears (53-12 to Bristol) hope also died for many Gloucester fans.
It’s hard to walk away from the thing you love though and Gloucester Rugby Business Club, sponsored by Willans LLP solicitors, saw a near full house at 8am on Thursday morning with members unable to resist the chance to hear from new backroom recruits Chris Boyd and Rob Burgess.
Sport can be prone to overanalysing itself, but rugby’s best leadership tends to enjoy leaning into robust conversations and Boyd and Burgess were frank, honest and unflinching in a session chaired by ex-player Mark Atkinson in which the audience, some still struggling with Friday’s result, pulled no punches either.
“Friday night’s game was awful,” said Boyd, the club’s new technical director, reading the mood in the room.
“It didn’t look good wherever you stood. When your team loses and you think they have given everything they can, that’s one thing.
“On Friday I didn’t think they gave all they could give. That is unacceptable. That’s not good enough for me.”
The New Zealander, whose coaching CV includes a recent successful stint as director of rugby at Northampton Saints, was joined by the club’s new general manager, Rob Burgess.
Their frankness was matched by questions from the floor too, like ‘why doesn’t the club just come clean, be honest with fans and admit that winning the Premiership is not going to happen soon and that finishing near the foot of the table is the more realistic target?’.
“Welcome to Gloucester Rugby,” said Atkinson, with wry humour, stepping into the line of fire to take a little heat off the delivery before moving aside to give the unfazed Boyd room to counter.
The enthusiasm and positivity brought by the club’s new names was clear, as is the scale of the challenge the club faces – but both men exuded the same positivity and confidence that the key pieces were already falling into place for positive change.
Summing up, building a culture that recognises the club’s history and heritage is paramount if people are to feel they belong - key to cultivating the pride players will need, because in the short term the team will need to be more than the sum of its parts to compete effectively.
Expanding the footprint of its academy, getting better at developing talent, moving out players who don’t fit the game plan, doing all that fast enough to keep their exciting new signings on board - while building a club that’s fit for the future - that’s all part of the plan too. In short, there’s lots to do.
“Right now we have a group of players and you have to work with what you have got and work out the best way to play with that squad,” said Boyd, conscious that Gloucester’s history shows the fan’s tendency towards liking gritty, gnarly forwards - and that the current squad is something else.
“How we play next year has to reflect the strengths of the players we have. You can bring the odd person in, and hopefully we can add some new ingredients into the mix too, but at the moment we’re still chewing our way through that.
“We have Jean (Kleyn), Jac (Morgan) coming in and they will bring strength and allow us to play a little differently. And it will take a while to flush out the players who don’t work for everyone and bring in those that do.
“But the reality is, this year and next year Gloucester won’t have the best squad, so we have to get the maximum out of what we have got. And there are a lot of good guys here.”
What that might look like on the pitch next season as the new coaching team and new signings make their impact?
“At the end of Monday the coaches all sat down to discuss how we might play next year and the coaches told me the way they think this group of players would play best,” said Boyd.
“I said to them ‘what teams plays like that?’ and they said the only team that does is Toulouse.”
For those who don’t follow French rugby Stade Toulousain’s style is the embodiment of ‘French flair’ - bold, attacking, expansive, characterised by running, passing, and scoring tries through the backs. If you like, it’s a game built on “tempo, agility, and switching gears”.
If Gloucester fans care to admit it, they will have seen more than flashes of this - particularly at the end of last season - but on current form probably remain unconvinced.
“We then picked that (the Toulous comparison) apart for a bit,” added Boyd, talking about that conversation between the new coaching team.
“It’s unrealistic to expect we can deliver that same level of performance as Toulouse; they have some of the best players in the world.
“We might not be as good, but ‘yeah, it has to suit what we have in the pen’.”
Other clues as to how Boyd thinks about the game came from his retelling of a conversation he had with Brendan Venter (Saracens’ new director of rugby), who had insisted the game was won by what you did without the ball in hand.
“For me, I’m not interested in the physical game without the ball. At Northampton we were all about getting the ball.
“I do not want to play without the ball. But we have to find the sweet spot for everyone that we have got,” said Boyd, who admitted he had one or two offers to work elsewhere, but coming to Gloucester had been his first choice.
“Northampton are a decent, old-fashioned rugby club you can respect and so is Gloucester. I had an offer from another club, but I like history, I like passion for a club. I’m not a flash-town kind of guy - so I didn’t choose the other offer.”
Atkinson was not going to let Burgess get away without having to explain his decision to join that “little club” down the road, otherwise known as arch rivals Bath.
Burgess said the move to Gloucester spoke of where his heart has always been. He lives locally and attends games at Kingsholm as a fan.
He had left a high-flying, well-funded, financially stable club because he believed in the leadership at Gloucester off the pitch, such as Alex Brown, the new names coming in and the potential to achieve something special.
“I’m very pleased to be here. I first worked here in 2005. That’s the reason I’m in rugby. I moved here to work with Dean Ryan. I was team manager for three years. It was a really good period for the club. I always wanted to come back to work here,” said Burgess, the club’s new general manager.
“I was delighted when Alex Brown and I chatted a few weeks back. I see Gloucester as my club. Gloucester is the city I call home. I’m here to help take the club forward.”
Burgess added: “My big takeaway from Bath is it is first and foremost about the people. You have to get good people in the building. You have to create a good ethos that people want to be part of.
“If you get that right then 80 per cent of the challenge becomes retaining that you have got.
“Success is probably what it is for any business, I would suggest. It’s about your output. And you get that more consistently by developing your staff.
“If it was all about recruitment it would be simple. Creating a good rugby club is about doing a whole lot of things well, creating clear pathways so people can see a way forward to where we want to be.”
What does success look like, asked Atkinson.
“For me, it’s about consistency and your output on the field that is recognised by supporters and fans. It’s about creating a belief that your players will turn up every week and perform every week,” said Boyd
“It’s not about short-term fixes; it’s about creating something for the long term.”
Boyd’s insight into head coach George Skivington’s position shed light on the kinds of that came to rest on the shoulders of a few since Covid took out two Premiership clubs and stripped the fat from just about every other.
“Twenty-five per cent of professional rugby clubs collapsed in Covid. It was a tough time. Rightly or wrongly Skivs (Skivington) became director of rugby, head coach, and forwards coach. That is simply too much for anyone.
“I have not met anyone with a bigger appetite for work. We had a meeting the other day. He was in about 5.15 to do his stretches and to get his coffee. And he was still here at 7pm.
“Whether he’s working smartly, I don’t know,” he added, unable to resist the opportunity. “But his work ethos is unquestionable. And now he’s just one task he’ll finally be able to concentrate on one thing.”
Skivington had shouldered the all-encompassing director of rugby role since 2023.
The club recently launched the ‘A Piece of Holm’ campaign to raise £200,000 to expand its academy footprint with new talent centres across the West Midlands. The underlined how tough things had been, but also presented opportunity.
“With the demise of Worcester and London Irish, the talent pool is wider that ever. There is an incredible amount of talent out there and we have to make sure we make the most of that,” said Boyd.
“It is about how we bring through and develop the talent we have. What happens when those youngsters get here and what they feel the club can offer them, what route they can see for themselves and developing them at the right moments.
“That’s what will make them want to come here and keep them here.”
Although the Business Club session ended with the exchange above directly challenging the club to come clean about next year being about building rather than winning, it started with a very different comment.
And that comment probably explains not only why Boyd and Burgess are here in the county, but why, despite such a poor season, the club has been able to sign the likes of Rugby World Cup winner with South Africa, Jean Kleyn, Wales’ international hooker, Dewi Lake, Wales captain Jac Morgan.
Signings also include Joe Joyce, Dan Robson and Phil Cokanasiga, as well as former England centre Joel Tomkins who joins as the new defence coach, with current defence coach, Dom Waldouck, becoming head of player development.
And that comment was this.
“There is no doubt there is room for growth. I think if we can get a little bit of confidence there is a decent ceiling there,” said Boyd, purposely understated, suggesting he has higher hopes than he is prepared to let on.
Just in case any of the Shed Heads are getting depressed by the suggestion that a free-running-style rugby will dominate, despite all the talk of ‘respecting and recognising the club’s history’ (which surely means an emphasis on the fowards!), Boyd had this to say.
“Deacs is back (Brett Deacon). He played for the club 20 years ago. He has gone and trodden a long coaching path at Leicester.
“He is committed to taking things into his own hands. He is determined and focused. He wants to create a forward pack that is gnarly.”
If honesty and openness like this characterises the way forward for the club then Gloucester fans may just have a very difficult summer - as hope begins to creep back in again. Such is the life of the sports fan!