Ten minutes may not seem like a long time but in a sporting context it is huge as Gloucester found to their cost last season.

Sadly for supporters of the Cherry and Whites, it was the final 10 minutes of games when things started to go wrong when potential wins were turned into morale-sapping defeats.

It will be one of the major things for new head coach Johan Ackermann to address when he arrives from South Africa.

“Last year we had the unhappy knack of throwing away games when in winning positions,” said chief executive Stephen Vaughan.

“The stats show that if games had finished after 70 minutes last season we’d have finished fourth in the Premiership.

“So that final 10 minutes is a huge focus of what we’re about now. When you get stats like that you can’t ignore them. Naturally we have to ask ourselves what it could be – is it the substitutions, is it fitness, a mental weakness?

“I still believe that we are not far away from being a top six side. We could have made it last season almost right up to the last day of the season and a top six finish this season has to be a minimum requirement.

“If we can get into the top six, then we can get into the top four and from there we can go on and win it.”

Vaughan, who admits Gloucester have been “perennial under-achievers” in recent seasons, can’t wait for Ackermann to get his feet under the table at Kingsholm.

“He’ll bring some South African guile, energy and commitment,” he said. “He’ll bring that extra one per cent that maybe has been missing.”

It’s no wonder Vaughan is pinning a lot on Ackermann because he has had a tough few months.

A disappointing end to the last campaign which saw Gloucester miss out on a place in the Promised Land – next season’s Champions Cup – was just the start.

It was followed by the collapse of the proposed Mohed Altrad investment plans and then the Carl Fearns U-turn which saw the back row turn his back on his agreed move to Kingsholm.

Those are three big kicks in the teeth for any chief executive to have to take and even the ever-optimistic Vaughan has found it more difficult to walk around with a smile on his face over the past few weeks.

“Yes, it hasn’t been the smoothest of summers,” he said, “and yes, it has been frustrating. But it almost seems par for the course for the club. We never seem to have a quiet summer.”

Vaughan has been the man at the helm at Kingsholm since 2012 and has overseen some good times – most notably the 2015 Challenge Cup win over Edinburgh – but like everyone else at Gloucester he wants more.

The summer setbacks are well known but they will not be offered as excuses if Gloucester fail to deliver again this season.

On the contrary Vaughan hopes and expects Gloucester to be pushing for a place in the top six of the Premiership and is encouraged by some of the signings that have already been made.

“The likes of Owen Williams, Jason Woodward and Val Rapava-Ruskin will give us good strength in depth as well as increasing competition for places,” he said. “That’s what you want. It lifts training and increases the energy levels around the club.

“What you want is your tighthead, say, coming off after 60 minutes and the replacement going on and improving the effort and spirit levels.”

While Vaughan hopes and expects Gloucester to do better than in previous years – they’ve finished in the bottom half of the Premiership in the last four seasons – he obviously cannot say for sure how they will do next season.

Avoiding the big guns at the start of the campaign – the 2017/18 fixtures are released on Friday 7th July – would help but whatever the fixture list throws up there is sure to be plenty of support for the club again.

Season ticket sales are about on a par with this time last year and Vaughan said: “In terms of size, we’re not London and we’re not even Bristol or Birmingham but this is a big rugby area. The fans enjoy coming to Kingsholm and they don’t want to miss out when we do click.

“But we’ve had to be intelligent with our pricing structure – some prices have gone up and some have gone down.

“Match-days are a huge revenue stream for us but we can’t get away from the fact that we are delivering bottom half of the table rugby.

“That puts pressure on everyone, it’s a nonsense to say that it doesn’t. David Humphreys [director of rugby] is clued up. He knows the impact it can have if the fans are leaving early or the bars are empty.

“If things are going great on the pitch it has a huge knock-on effect.”

That Kingsholm pitch is something that could be radically changed over the next 12 months with the very real prospect that an artificial surface could be installed next summer.

The preference at the moment is for a 4G pitch and Vaughan is excited about the plans.

“Our pitch is the worst performing pitch in the Premiership at certain times of the season – in layman’s terms it’s very muddy.

“It’s nothing to do with the groundsmen – they do an excellent job – but we can’t train on the pitch, we can’t do the captain’s run.

“We want Kingsholm to be a fortress but it’s more difficult if the players are only there once every two weeks. Psychologically, it doesn’t feel so much like home if you’re not there all the time.

“It would also give us the opportunity to play a much freer running style of rugby. The stats show that there are a lot less scrum resets on artificial pitches.”

An artificial surface would, of course, bring many more advantages outside the obvious benefits to the club’s players and coaching staff.

“We could have local teams playing games at Kingsholm before Gloucester’s game – Longlevens, Cinderford, Matson v Coney Hill – who knows?,” said Vaughan. “Our women’s team could play there much more instead of just three times a season and the pitch could be available for the community to use week in, week out.”

If the work does go ahead – and the money has to be found to pay for it, of course – it would take 12 weeks to complete.

In all likelihood it would mean that Gloucester could have to play their first two fixtures of the 2018/19 Premiership season away from home – but that would be a short-term inconvenience to accommodate a long-term investment.