Greg Somerville has yet to play two hours of rugby for his new club and now the former New Zealand prop will miss the next two months of the season. Somerville, who made his debut for Gloucester against Calvisano this month, has had surgery at Cheltenham General Hospital to reattach the retina of his left eye, which he injured in Saturday’s defeat away to London Irish.

It is a blow for player and club, particularly since Gloucester saw in Somerville an individual who would instantly become one of the squad’s core leaders. “It’s unbelievably bad luck because everyone was looking forward to working with him at this crucial stage of the season,” Dean Ryan, the head coach, said.

Somerville, 31, will miss Gloucester’s last two Heineken Cup pool six games, against Cardiff Blues and Biarritz next month, as well as half a dozen Guinness Premiership fixtures, the first away to Bristol on Saturday, when Gloucester badly need to bounce back from the 30-point drubbing they received from London Irish. “It’s a nasty injury and will take some considerable recovery time,” Ryan said.

Bristol were given much-needed reassurance yesterday that the squad’s immediate future is not in doubt. One of the bottom-placed club’s leading investors addressed the players a month ahead of schedule to say that not only is the board committed to its present level of investment but that new money is coming in, helping to guarantee existing contracts.

Harlequins seek to recover from their pre-Christmas defeat when they play in front of a sold-out crowd of 50,000 against Leicester at Twickenham on Saturday. After their European heroics against Stade Français, losing away to Northampton on Saturday was no great surprise, particularly having had three withdrawals through illness and two with injury in the 24 hours before the game.

“The boys have to understand that these are the kind of games they have to cope with,” Dean Richards, the director of rugby, said. “Everyone felt a bit flat but there can be no better game to get back to winning ways than against Leicester.”

It is 4½ years since Richards and Leicester concluded a 22-year association, as player and team manager, but the former England No 8 believes that the change has been good for him. “If I had been at Leicester still, I don’t think I would have had that same freedom that I have had at Harlequins,” he said. “I’m enjoying what I’m doing and I honestly believe that this is a better club that’s going places.”

Harlequins hope that Saturday’s match, for which some 47,000 ticket sales have come from the London area, will pioneer a regular Christmas event. The club are eager to see if they can, in the future, sell out Twickenham’s full capacity of 82,000.

“This is a staging post,” Mark Evans, the chief executive, said. “The next stage is to repeat it on a number of occasions. If we can look at filling Twickenham, then you can look at throwing perhaps another £100,000 at it and have some fun in the build-up, if not on quite the scale that Max Guazzini does with Stade Français in Paris.”

Nick Kennedy, the England lock, is expected to be available for London Irish against Saracens on Saturday after missing the win over Gloucester with a head injury but Newcastle Falcons will be without Hall Charlton, the scrum half, for several weeks while he recovers from a broken rib suffered against Leicester last weekend.

Newcastle have fixed no term on when they expect Jonny Wilkinson to play again. The England fly half hopes to be fit by March and is proceeding with the next stage of rehabilitation after an arthroscopy this month to assess the operation on his damaged left kneecap in October. “This stage involves making sure that strengthening, flexibility and all these issues are dealt with,” Steve Bates, the director of rugby, said. “It’s a case of continually monitoring how he progresses.”

The IRB has asked the French federation to explain the appearance last weekend of Marius Tincu, the Romania hooker, for Perpignan against Castres in the Top 14. Tincu was suspended in October for 18 weeks after a gouging incident in the Heineken Cup game against the Ospreys and cannot play again until March 9.

Holiday programme: Friday: Sale Sharks v London Wasps. Saturday: Bath v Northampton, Bristol v Gloucester, Harlequins v Leicester, Newcastle Falcons v Worcester Warriors, Saracens v London Irish. January 3: Gloucester v Saracens, London Irish v Newcastle, Northampton v Bristol, Worcester v Sale. January 4: Leicester v Bath, Wasps v Harlequins.