Gloucester-Hartpury head of rugby Dan Murphy says having The Circus’ unbeaten Premiership Women’s Rugby league run ended is something of a “monkey off the back” for his side.
The league-leaders suffered their first defeat of the campaign 41-39 away at Ealing Trailfinders on Friday, meaning their attempts to go the entire PWR season without loss ended at the penultimate hurdle.
Their previous defeat had come all the way back in matchday eight of the 2024-25 season, nearly 18 months earlier.
Murphy says, however, the run was never at the forefront of his players’ minds.
Speaking to BBC Radio Gloucester after the defeat, he said: “I have been asked this question [on the importance of the unbeaten run] a lot lately, ever since someone mentioned that Arsenal had done it about 20 years ago.
“I have always said that this was never something we were going after as a group.
“This team want to get better as a team and help those around them so that we perform well.
“We have a lot of that to do this week but the monkey is off our back now, so away we go.”
Murphy’s side are already guaranteed to end the season at the top of the table as they seek a fourth consecutive PWR title – a first under his reign – and will have a home semi-final when the play-offs begin next week.
But the 40-year-old believes the loss to Trailfinders is exactly what the rest of the league would have wanted to see with the post-season play-offs approaching.
“Ealing [Trailfinders] have just shown the rest of the league how to beat us and we need to stop them doing it again,” he said.
“It was a helter-skelter week, bringing everyone back in together after such a long time apart, but we are disappointed to lose the game in the matter we did.
“To come back and get two points off that game was brilliant and showed what we can do, but need to work out how we get better from today.”
The Circus now turn their attention to the final fixture of the regular season this Sunday against second-from-bottom Bristol Bears.