Morgan on "new era" at Gloucester

Editor

Gloucester coach Olly Morgan believes his side's showing at the Premiership Rugby Sevens can be used as a springboard.

Gloucester coach Olly Morgan says his side's showing at the Premiership Rugby Sevens can be utilised as a springboard for the 2014/15 season.

Impressive victories over Exeter, London Irish and Bath saw the Cherry and Whites progress into next Friday's final at the Twickenham Stoop.

And for Morgan, who recently retired from rugby due to injury, he was delighted to see his Steph Reynold's inspired line-up win all their fixtures.

“Across the board it has been a great evening, with 13,500 or more supporting and we were able to kick-start the new era of Gloucester,” he told The Citizen.

“Everyone understands how we want to play, we want to play a good brand of attacking rugby and sevens is a good way to showcase that.

“When you have talent like Steph and Henry Purdy in the backline it just shows how we want to emulate that in 15s.

“Steph has the lot for sevens and he proved that last year. He probably wasn't as effective as last year because he was a bit of a marked man, but he still finds space and manages to score tries.

“It certainly wasn't a one man show, Steph quite rightly took the limelight last year but Dan Thomas, Callum Braley, Henry Purdy, all these young guys who have come in did absolutely brilliantly.

“They put their hands up to the likes of David (Humphreys) and Nick (Walshe) and said 'I'm here and want to start'.

“We then had the experience of Aled (Thomas), Jacob (Rowan) and Billy Meakes so it was a good blend.”

Morgan added on his defending champions: “If we can kick on there's no reason why we can't repeat what we did last year.

“It can be difficult with first team fixtures coming up and junior international commitments but we will try to keep the squad as similar as possible.

“Having looked at the Welsh tournament last weekend and the other two this weekend there's going to be a lot of competition.”