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Gloucester sign Wales No10 Gareth Anscombe
By Josh Raisey
Gloucester have announced the signing of Wales fly-half Gareth Anscombe ahead of next season, as reported by RugbyPass.
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The 32-year-old has been without a club since his move to Japan Rugby League One’s Suntory Sungoliath fell through at the end of 2023. The move to Japan was cancelled after the fly-half underwent surgery for a groin injury he picked up at the World Cup with Wales.
The 37-cap international’s last outing was a player of the match performance in Wales’ record 40-6 win over Australia at the World Cup last year. It was in the warm-up to Wales’ following match against Georgia that the New Zealand-born back suffered his injury.
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After the signing was announced, Gloucester director of rugby George Skivington said: “We’re really pleased to bring a player with Gareth’s club and international experience to Kingsholm.
“He’s one of the top fly halves in the Northern Hemisphere and we feel he’ll complement our other options at fly half and full back well.
“We’re looking forward to him joining us in the summer.”
As a guest on the Sportin Wales podcast recently, Anscombe outlined what unfolded with his injury and contract in Japan.
“I remember speaking to the physio and he said, ‘Mate, you have pulled your adductor off the bone’. That was really surprising but also really unusual – you don’t tend to see adductors fully torn off the bone. So it looked like I had to get surgery and I flew back to the UK as quickly as possible and got under the knife really quickly in London.
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“It just floored me really, because I was still so functional. Once I got to Japan, I knew something wasn’t quite right, but usually people with these injuries, they are on crutches. I could walk and even thought I could probably run in a straight line, so it just didn’t make sense to me that I had such a big injury and yet I felt so good. It surprised everyone.
“They [Suntory] decided that it wasn’t quite worth the risk and decided to go get another international. It is upsetting, frustrating, a whole mix of emotions, but you understand the nature of the game and they have got to protect themselves just like I have got to protect myself.”
