Gloucester have 'belief' in new attacking style

Gloucester have "belief" that their new attacking style of play is working following their thrilling 44-41 win against Bristol last weekend, says their attack coach.

The Cherry and Whites are aiming to implement a more expansive style of rugby this term after finishing a disappointing ninth in 2023-24 with only five league wins.

They ran in five tries against their West Country neighbours for their first victory of the season and next play Sale away on Friday.

"I think it was brilliant for the belief in the team to transition it into a Premiership game," attack coach James Lightfoot-Brown told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.

"We know we can do it, we see it in training week-to-week and I think that will give us a little bit more belief going into our next few runs of games."

Lightfoot-Brown joined Gloucester during the summer of 2023 from London Irish and said bringing in a new style of play has been a long-term plan.

The signings of a number of experienced backs this summer in winger Christian Wade - who scored a hat-trick against Bristol - and Wales half-back pair Tomos Williams and Gareth Anscombe, has also added to the change around Kingsholm.

"There were some indications towards the end of the season that we weren't having the ball enough and we weren't getting the right amount of possession to threaten defences," Lightfoot-Brown said.

"It was something we discussed heavily throughout the back-end of the season and pre-season so I'm excited as a group as to where this team can take it."

Evidence of Gloucester's new style was visible during their first game of the campaign against Saracens, despite the result ending in defeat.

They occupied the top three places across the league statistics for line breaks through Williams, Max Llewellyn and George Barton, while they made the most visits to a 22 of any team during round one.

"We learned what we were capable of in the last half an hour, 20 minutes against Saracens," said centre Seb Atkinson.

"We said we'd have to do that for 80 minutes no matter what the score, what the momentum of the game is, we've got to create our own momentum through trying to play with the ball and get the ball in the hands of the people that are most exciting."

With a new style comes a new training regime however and Lightfoot-Brown said the players have had to build a different type of fitness, particularly stop-start sprints over short distances.

"We need to get really used to repeating them at a high level with good timing to challenge defences. The more you can do that the more you can be accurate at the line with good changes of pace to challenge defences," Lightfoot-Brown said.

"The important thing is that we keep worrying about ourselves and make sure that we're on the money with our processes, our timing, our breakdown.

"If we do that I think we've got enough quality within the team to challenge any defence that we come up against."