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Somerville settling into new surrounds

Thursday 04th December 2008

New task: Somerville is looking forward to a new challenge

Eight months after signing for Gloucester Greg Somerville is finally ready to settle into his new surroundings in the West of England.

Having racked up 57 caps for New Zealand, Somerville is now ready to take up a two and a half year deal with Gloucester, keeping him at Kingsholm until at least 2010.

Somerville, who has already started training with his new club, knows it is up to him to adapt to the new culture.

"The onus is on me to learn what's going on and fit in to the culture," he told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.

"It is a challenge and it seems like a pretty good group of guys here, so it shouldn't be too hard a transition."

Despite bringing an end to his All Blacks career by opting to move to Europe, Somerville said picking Kingsholm was an easy decision to make.

"When I was looking around the club I had faith in what they were doing here and the team wanted to be successful," he added.

"I had a lot of trust once the decision had been made to come here that what I'd heard was what I was going to get, there was no risk element to it.

"I could have gone to another club, but you don't know what's going to happen," he added.

"I knew the coaching systems at Gloucester were good and they've got good players and they wanted to do well - that made it easy in the end."

Somerville could make his debut when the Premiership resumes after two rounds of Heineken Cup matches.