Gloucester Rugby face Bath Rugby at the Recreation Ground on Saturday in Round Three of the 2025/26 Gallagher PREMJack Clement of Gloucester goes past Ben Curry during the Gallagher PREM match between Sale Sharks and Gloucester Rugby (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Gloucester Rugby head into this weekend’s West Country derby away at Bath with few signs of reinforcements, having suffered a freak series of injuries in the early weeks of the fledgling season.

Cherry and Whites director of rugby George Skivington has confirmed that his two local backrow stars Jack Clement and Lewis Ludlow have both suffered significant injuries to sideline them for the derby and, the coming weeks after, following a winless start to the 2025/26 Gallagher PREM campaign.

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Skivington said: “Jack has done something to his ankle [in the opening day defeat to Sale Shark]. Luds broke his hand. Arthur Clarke broke his foot in training just running. He’s done the same injury that he did with England last year on the other foot.

“Max Llewellyn just tweaked something on Tuesday or Wednesday, in training.”

“The lads you’re used to seeing, you probably thought were going to be starting, are obviously not starting. They’ve all just picked up bangs and obviously, Val [Rapava-Ruskin and Jamal [Ford-Robinson] are out as well. So it’s just been one of those spells, but we’re not going to complain about it. Every team’s going to have it, everyone’s going to have it at different times. It’s just thrown our recruitment in the deep end straight away.”

Six of Gloucester’s starting XV in Sunday’s 35-37 defeat to Northampton Saints were summer signings, with another four on the bench, making it is hardly a surprise there was a lack of fluency and cohesion on the pitch.

Ben Loader started on the wing, with Josh Hathaway injured, Will Joseph wore 13 with Welsh international Llewellyn sidelined. Irish international Ross Byrne was always likely to start in the 10 jersey as the summer’s headline signing but until the second half at Kingsholm he has struggled to get the backline fizzing. In the pack, James Venter, Jack Mann and Josh Basham are an entirely new backrow following the headline departures of Ruan Ackermann, Zach Mercer and Albert Tuisue, and the subsequent injuries.

Skivington continued: “We’ve just got a lot of new people on the pitch, and that wouldn’t be how I would organise the start of the season for sure. The idea obviously was to drip the lads in around all the boys who know our systems inside out. Circumstances with injury has just put us in the position that we’ve had to start them early.”

Gloucester may have Kirill Gototvsev back for the trip to the Rec on Saturday to face the defending champions after he pulled out of the Round Two game late in the day, forcing Skivington to bring All Black Nepo Laulala onto the bench only to not play him, asking Afo Fasogbon to go the full 80 minutes. Laulala remains something of an unknown quantity as he continues to work his way back from an achilles injury that has sidelined him for the best part of two years.

Skivington explained: “Kirill’s another one. He took a bang last week in the game [against Sale], and it’s not a serious bang, but he was due to be involved. And then on Saturday in training, he just said, I don’t feel great. So again, for where we are right now, it’s not worth risking someone who’s not 100 percent. He’s not on the serious list, thankfully. But I’d rather look after those front row boys where possible.”

Skivington said he and his staff have gone away and reviewed their pre-season programme and recent training to determine whether they need to make adjustments to protect the health of their players, but came to the conclusion that the majority of the injuries have been just ‘freak’ unpredictable incidents.