Vereniki Goneva to sign for Leicester Tigers – Rugby News Update
It seems that Vereniki Goneva is going to sign for the Leicester Tigers very soon, and the 28-year-old Fijian winger will leave the second division French side, Tarbes at the end of the season.
The manager of rugby at Leicester Richard Cockerill has admitted that they are about to tie down the flyer, who has been capped by the Pacific Ocean country, Fiji, 22 times so far.
"We are in the process of getting that completed and it is pretty much done," Cockerill told the
Leicester Mercury. "He is a Pacific Islander who is very quick and unpredictable.”
Although he will be added to the squad, the Tigers will lose the services of Alesana Tuilagi and Horacio Agulla, who are moving to new pastures. Tuilagi will be playing in Japan next season, while Agulla has dropped down to the Championship.
The Fijian is a brilliant winger and one of his most notable performances came at the World Cup against Namibia at the Rotorua International Stadium. They easily dispatched the minnow nation but it was Goneva who shined the brightest in that match. He scored
four tries for the Islanders in that much.
Due to his good wing play he has been compared with the outgoing Tuilagi, but Cockerill has been quick to dismiss any such comparisons.
"He can give you something out of nothing and we have seen that in some of the Test matches that he has played. I don't see him as a like-for-like with Alesana though.”
He further distanced the new signing from Tuilagi by comparing him to another player, when he added, "There is not a like-for-like replacement for Alesana. Only Napolioni Nalaga at Clermont is probably the only like-for-like replacement and we cannot spend
20% of the salary cap on one bloke!"
The Fiji Winger has played 22 matches for Fiji, making his debut against Samoa at Apia on May 19, 2007 and his last match was against Wales at Hamilton, on October 2, 2011.
The 28-year-old still has a long career ahead of him and joining a team such as the Tigers will only enhance his importance for the national team.
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