Gloucester Rugby looking for perfect selection balance for West Country derby cup clash with Bath

Gloucester Rugby host Bath Rugby at Kingsholm on Friday night in Round Four of the 2025/26 PREM Rugby Cup

Jack Cotgreave of Gloucester runs with the ball (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Gloucester Rugby are set to bring in a few more big guns ‘in need of game time’ for Friday night’s PREM Rugby Cup derby clash with Bath Rugby, but will also keep the spine of the team who earned a rare 29-28 victory away at Sale Sharks last time out.

With the Cherry and Whites on a bye weekend next week, the fourth round of pool stage games in the cup provides director of rugby George Skivington with his last opportunity to get game time into his players before they return to the Gallagher PREM with a massive home tie against Harlequins on November 29.

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Gloucester are desperately targeting the fixture to pick up a first league win of the season against the side sitting just one place above them in the table before rolling into back-to-back Champions Cup fixtures and then the Christmas block of games.

Skivington’s hands are slightly tied when it comes to selection this week by a combination of injuries and international call-ups, with the likes of Afolabi Fasogbon, Ciaran Knight, Charlie Atkinson and Caolan Englefield still away with England A, who face Spain, Tomos Williams, Freddie Thomas and Max Llewellyn with Wales ahead of playing Japan and Matias Alemanno in action with Argentina against Scotland.

Speaking ahead of the latest West Country derby clash with Bath, having lost 38-17 with the first team at the Rec in the PREM back in October, Gloucester defence coach Dom Waldouck said: “There’s a bit of rotation in the team this week and a couple of guys coming in, but there’s still some opportunities for some of the younger players to put in another strong performance and I think they really earned that from the way they played against Sale.

“It’s a tough balance to make and George makes those decisions. I think he does a very good job of doing that, but it’s a tough balance of getting that cohesion whilst also giving opportunity to guys and creating competition.

“Harry Taylor will wear the captain’s armband again and I think he did a brilliant job in driving the messaging last week and particularly our fight together message. We want to fight for each other and want to show our supporters what it means to play for this club and wear the shirt. George Barton and Will Trenholm also did brilliant jobs against Sale in leading and you’ll see a similar group of guys leading the way again this week.”

While Gloucester currently sit top of Pool A in the PREM Rugby Cup, with two wins from three games so far, Bath are the defending champions and will arrive at Kingsholm as favourites due to their impressively deep squad.

Waldouck said: “I think Bath are a settled team, they’ve got a lot of talent at all levels of that club, whether it be in the first team, academy, they’ve swept up all the talent in the country, so it’ll be a very, very big challenge.

“This is an important game for us against our local rivals and we want to win. We want to win every game we play, but I think that just adds a bit of extra spice to this game and certainly an extra motivation for the players.”