Gloucester Hartpury focused on recovery and redemption after Trailfinders loss

Gloucester Hartpury’s next two games have two simple aims: bounce back, then right some wrongs. 

The defending PWR champions were defeated for the first time this season as Trailfinders Women secured 41-39 win at home. 

The two teams will meet again at Kingsholm in two weeks’ time in the Play-Off semi-final, after the Circus have rounded out the regular season against Bristol Bears. 

“It is elite sport, you don’t ever want to lose,” Georgia Brock said. “We can say it is a good time to have lost here, but I think it is only good to have lost if we can actually show that we have bounced back and learned off the back of it.  

“And how we do that is by coming here at the weekend and putting out a good performance. 

“It is a week to right our wrongs from last week. You never want to lose a game of rugby, so this is a week we can go out, get a bit of momentum leading into the semi-final next week.”

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Gloucester were plagued by ill-discipline in their loss to Trailfinders, which is why there has been no moratorium over their first defeat since Round 8 of the 2024-25 season. 

Instead, head coach Dan Murphy is taking the positives of living by the phrase ‘if you don’t win, you learn’. 

He said: “In sport, you always win or learn, you can learn when you win as well but you learn a lot more when results don’t go your way, so there were lots of learnings.  

“We are disappointed with how we performed in large parts of that game, but we showed glimpses of brilliance in defence and attack.  

“And it is about reminding ourselves we can do that in large parts of the game, which we have done all year, and in previous years. It is in our ability, it was that change of momentum that we needed to shift.  

“You don’t ever want to lose two games on the bounce and we haven’t done that for a very long time.  

“We’ve taken a long hard look at ourselves about what we can learn and what we can take from that game and it is going to be a rematch in two weeks’ time. 

“But we have an opposition this weekend in Bristol, it is their last game of the season. We have always had great battles with them over the years, and this one is going to be the same so our learnings can’t be saved for two weeks’ time, it has to be about this week. 

“We’ve got Bristol this weekend, we want to bounce back and then we’ve got a real good opportunity to right some wrongs against Trailfinders in two weeks’ time.”