The new season can’t come around quickly enough for Gloucester’s rugby fans.

The club’s first competitive game of 2022/23 kicks off on Sunday 11^th September when Wasps are the visitors for the start of what is an eagerly-anticipated Gallagher Premiership campaign.

And it’s easy to see why there is such excitement around Kingsholm because head coach George Skivington’s side enjoyed a very good season last time out, just missing out on the end-of-season play-offs.

But fifth place was a huge step forward on the previous campaign, and 13 wins and one draw from their 24 games tell their own story.

They finished just two points adrift of fourth-placed Northampton, but if you take a closer look at last season’s table – and which Gloucester fan doesn’t want to take a closer look at a table that sees Bath at the bottom of the pile! – you will see that just two teams bettered Gloucester’s points difference of 160 and only one team bettered their 19-point bonus point haul.

That all makes very good reading, of course, so it’s no wonder there was plenty of  excitement when 39-year-old Skivington committed his future to the club by signing a new long-term deal back in May.

Skivington, a former Wasps, Leicester and London Irish second row who also played for England Saxons, is about to start his third season as the main man at Gloucester and he made it clear when he signed his new contract that he is hungry for success.

“We want to be a successful club year after year,” he said. “What we’ve done over the last couple of years is lay really good foundations.

"We’ve grown the way we play and the culture so that everyone knows what’s expected of them day to day.

“There’s huge untapped potential and that’s massively exciting.”

It certainly is and what makes this season just that little bit more exciting is that Gloucester will be back competing in Europe’s premier club competition, the Heineken Champions Cup, which will see them go head-to-head in the pool stages with Irish giants Leinster and Bordeaux-Begles.

Those matches take place in December and January, with Gloucester’s first game against Bordeaux set for the weekend of 10^th December at Kingsholm, still one of the great venues in world rugby.

By then Gloucester will be halfway through their Premiership campaign, a campaign that sees them travel to Saracens on Saturday 24^th September for their second game before they host Worcester on Saturday 1^st October.

Sadly, Gloucester’s supporters will have to wait until next year to see if their heroes can better last season’s 64-0 demolition of Bath at Kingsholm, with Bath not due to make the short trip up the A46 until early January.

That 10-try super-show will live long in the memory of all Gloucester fans who were there, of course, and the good news is that all the try-scorers that day – there were nine of them – are still at the club.

Flying wing Louis Rees-Zammit led the way with a brace and there was one apiece for Chris Harris, Santiago Carreras, Ben Morgan, Mark Atkinson, Lewis Ludlow, Ben Meehan, Jamal Ford-Robinson and Matias Alemanno.

Skivington, although still one of the younger coaches at the highest level, has been around long enough to know that games like that don’t come around too often, of course, but he knows what he wants and it resonates very much with what the fans want.

The club also reached the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup and the last four of the Premiership Rugby Cup last season and Skivington, who has also worked as forwards coach for London Irish and as assistant coach for Samoa, said that it was an easy decision to sign on and stay at Kingsholm.

“I’m massively grateful to the club for giving me this contract,” he said at the time. “The club did take a punt on me. There were higher profile coaches that they could have gone for which would have been the easy option in terms of people’s perceptions.

“My ambition is to prove them right and show them that they’ve hired the right guy and I’ll continue to do that.”

That’s music to the ears of Gloucester’s supporters, of course. It should be another great season. C’mon Glaws!