Gloucester boss Skivington: Saints clash will be hard work

The Cherry and Whites come to town looking to put a spanner in the works for Saints, who are targeting a top-four finish in the Gallagher Premiership.

Gloucester are currently 10th in the standings, with Saints fifth.

And Skivington knows it will be a tough ask for his side on Saturday.

"They (Saints) are on fire at the moment," Skivington said.

"They’ve got good momentum and they had a tricky spell earlier in the year and they found their way through it and I think their players are certainly united on what they want to do and their game plan is working well for them.

"I think the conditions suit what they’re trying to do as well and they’re good to watch. It's a real tough challenge for us.

"We know there’s going to be a lot of running. The metres per minute are going to be high.

"They’ve really nailed their set piece and I think that’s really what’s nailed them on actually.

"I think they’ve been playing some good attacking rugby but their set piece has come on really well in the last few weeks and their defence around the tighter areas has been addressed.

"I expect a good running game of rugby and I expect it to be hard work."

Gloucester, like Saints, had last weekend off as they were not in European action.

And that has given both sides a chance to recharge the batteries ahead of the Premiership run-in.

"We had two training days last week," Skivington said.

"We had plenty of rest time to get on top of things and refresh but there were a few areas that we wanted to nail down so we had two really good training days and we targeted a few bits that we want to push on in our game.

"It’s more the accuracy that we’ve been talking about in the last few weeks. We feel we’ve made some good shifts, particularly in attack.

"There’s still a couple of little bits that we want to get right that we feel could take us to the next level.

"We’ve reshaped our defence and set piece and we’re nowhere near the ceiling we feel we can get to so we’ve been pushing the messages we’ve been working on all year.

"We want to take it to the next level."