Gloucester 23-5 Bath: Three penalties before the break

Gloucester vs Bath ended in a 23-5 Gloucester win at Kingsholm in Round 4 of Premiership Rugby on Friday 23 October 2026, which kept them top of the table. Freddie Thomas and Max Llewellyn scored Gloucester’s tries, George Barton converted both and kicked three penalties, and Kepu Tuipulotu scored Bath’s only try.

How the match unfolded

There was no score in the first 20 minutes. Bath lost Santiago Carreras to an ankle injury in the 12th minute and had a try for Enoch Opoku-Gyamfi ruled out, before Ollie Thorley became the first of three Gloucester players to be shown a yellow card.

Thorley went to the sin-bin in the 21st minute for persistent team infringements and prop Ciaran Knight followed him in the 28th. Gloucester had conceded 11 penalties inside the first 27 minutes and were briefly down to 13 men.

Gloucester opened the scoring against the run of play in the 31st minute, Barton landing a penalty after Bath’s Guy Pepper was caught offside. Barton added a second in the 36th minute for 6-0 and a third in the 38th for 9-0.

Bath broke through with the last play of the half. Tuipulotu went over from a driving line-out in the 40th minute and the try went unconverted, leaving it 9-5 at half-time.

Gloucester had Will Joseph yellow-carded in the 46th minute for a deliberate knock-on, but Bath could not turn the extra man into points. Thomas instead forced his way over in the 54th minute after Caolan Englefield and Jack Clement had carried Gloucester into the Bath 22, and Barton converted for 16-5.

Bath changed four forwards at once in an attempt to reverse the tide. Instead Llewellyn forced his way over with two minutes left, following breaks from Jac Morgan and Will Joseph, and Barton’s conversion completed the scoring at 23-5.

Key stats

Gloucester scored two tries to Bath’s one and kicked two conversions and three penalties, while Bath kicked neither a conversion nor a penalty. Neither side scored a drop goal or was awarded a penalty try. All three yellow cards went to Gloucester and Bath were not shown one; there were no red cards.

Cards

Thorley was shown his yellow card in the 21st minute and Knight in the 28th, both before Gloucester’s opening penalty in the 31st. Joseph’s came in the 46th minute, after half-time, and Gloucester scored through Thomas in the 54th while he was still off the field. Bath escaped the sin-bin entirely.

What the win means

Gloucester stay top of the Premiership, and beat Bath at Kingsholm in the league for the first time since April 2022. The fixture details and TV coverage are in our Gloucester vs Bath guide. Their head coach George Skivington told BBC Radio Gloucestershire that “everything that could have got thrown against the boys did”, adding: “The defensive performance and the connectivity against the odds was testament to the boys.”

Bath’s head of rugby Johann van Graan said: “You can’t build pressure if you don’t finish your opportunities. We got in there loads of times.”

Updated 10.15pm GMT, Saturday 31 October: corrected the second try, which was scored by Max Llewellyn in the 78th minute and not by Arthur Clark in the 79th, and the second yellow card, which went to Ciaran Knight in the 28th minute and not to Jean Kleyn. The penalty and try timings have been amended to the official match record, and the possession and turnover figures have been removed because neither side’s official page prints them. The Bath match report and the league’s own match record carry the corrected scoring.