Windo of opportunity

Tony Windo: Inspiration for Gloucester's success story

Rugby director Nigel Davies believes scrum mastermind Tony Windo can inspire Gloucester to another victory at Worcester this weekend.

The Gloucester boss predicts that it will be a "real dogfight" for the keenly-anticipated Premiership local derby on Saturday when Windo will make his first Sixways return.

Hailing the Cherry and Whites front-row as the real triumph of the new campaign, Davies has backed the scrum coach to help beat his former club.

Windo racked up almost 200 games for Worcester before moving into coaching with the Warriors.

Davies said: "I can assure everyone that we'll hang on in there and stay in that fight. Tony obviously knows quite a bit about Worcester but he's been a huge signing for us, a massive asset."

Gloucester's powerful scrummage has been a feature of both their league clashes so far this term, helping lay the platform for 40-31 London Irish victory.

"Our scrum has been going particularly well so far this year," Davies declared. "It's been a massive part of what we've been able to achieve and it will continue to play a central role.

"I think the scrum will play a big part in this weekend's game too. The work that he [Windo] has done there with our pack has been fantastic."

Always teak-tough in the pack, Worcester's scrummage has long since been a compact and robust unit.

Evergreen scrum-technician and hooker Alexi Lutui has been the tormentor of Premiership opponents for a few years now and young English talent Matt Mullan has quickly become an adept top-flight prop too.

Success

Davies remains confident Gloucester have the strength to wrestle the upper-hand up front at Sixways this weekend.

"I think our front-row has been a real success story so far," the Gloucester boss claimed.

"These boys work extremely hard in the front-row, you're not only asking them to scrum particularly hard and work in the lineouts and the drives, but we're also asking them to run around the field, carry ball and make big hits as well.

"So they work harder than anybody. To have almost a complete new set of front-rowers coming on, off the bench, who are equally as good as the guys coming off, that's very important."

Davies has already spoken about the importance of having a strong 23-man party and he proved himself right last weekend.

"It's very much a case of the two basically being interchangeable," he added. "So as much as everyone wants to start and quite right too, we have been telling them that making the 23 is just as big achievement as starting the match.

"We'll look to carry forward our strong scrummage mind-set and we'll look to get the forwards into the game around the park again soon."