O'Shea pleased with die-hard attitude
Twickenham was treated to a rollercoaster of game, with Gloucester leading 17-15 at half-time thanks to tries from Jeremy Thrush and James Hook and the boot of Grieg Laidlaw just cancelling out scores from Marland Yarde and Danny Care, as well as the boot of Nick Evans.
But there was no let up to the scoreboard in the second-half and after an hour the side's were locked at 29-29, Henry Trinder running in two intercept tries for the Cherry and Whites, with Nick Easter and Ross Chisholm crossing at the other end.
But shortly afterwards, a Laidlaw penalty and superb solo try from Rob Cook gave Gloucester a 10-point lead with less than 10 minutes to go.
However, they couldn't hold on as hooker Richard Hibbard was sent to the sin bin and Chisholm barged over again, with Evans converting to level the scores having just also been successful with a penalty.
It could have been even worse for Gloucester too but Evans was wide with his last-gasp drop goal attempt to win it. And while he would have liked to have seen that effort be successful, O'Shea – who's side will ring in the new year in the top four – was still proud of his side's efforts.
"It was an incredible game. Fair play to Gloucester, we had possessions but we weren't accurate enough and we tried to play at times with a little too much ambition.
"But there were so many big positives. At 29-24 up the game looked like it was ours, we are then 29-39 down with six minutes to go and for me, what I'll focus on, is the side who actually wanted to come back and we ended up with a drop goal that could have won us the game and that shows a huge amount of what is upstairs in these guys.
"And I think we are going to get stronger as the season goes on and I hope we don't concede tries like we did, it was probably great for the neutral but horrendous for me. I thought we played some outstanding rugby and the big thing for us is that we got ourselves back in the game and got three points.
"This is game seven of 22 and we could have come away with one, could have come away with two, nearly got five but we have come away with three and in a long season you just have to keep on learning the whole time," O'Shea said.
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