FORMER Ridings High School pupil Dave Attwood is looking forward to playing alongside his rugby hero Alex Brown at Guinness Premiership giants Gloucester.

The 22-year-old grew up admiring Brown as a Bristol fan and has now followed in his footsteps by making the switch up the M5 for a new challenge at Kingsholm.

Attwood says he is hoping to learn a lot from many of the stars in Bryan Redpath’s squad and his aim is to break into the side and play in the second row with Brown, who he now travels to training with from his Bristol home.

“It’s a fortunate position that has come about and I want to take advantage of that,” said Attwood.

“I want to take advantage of the players around the top flight, observe them and take in as much as possible.”

“There are a lot of people I can learn a lot from and it’s really useful travelling in with Alex so I get to pick his brain.”

“I’m mirroring him I suppose. I met him before I came here and that was quite beneficial.”

Indeed, Attwood would love to emulate Brown, who has become a key man at Gloucester and has been capped three times by England.

The youngster has already played for England Saxons himself and has made nine Premiership appearances with Bristol, which included a full debut against Sale where he faced France ace Sebastien Chabal.

Although signed primarily to add depth to the squad, Attwood wants to make the most of any opportunity he gets.

“I have got ambitions to break into the first team,” he said.

“I will try to keep my head down, try as hard as possible if I get an opportunity and fight hard to hold onto it.”

“I would like to get into the England Saxons in a year or so,” he added Attwood admitted it was a difficult decision to leave Bristol and despite interest from other clubs the only other destination he considered seriously was Gloucester.

He said: “If I stayed at Bristol I would have been at the start of a building block where I would have played more rugby but we would have been down in the Championship and if we get promoted we could have been in a dogfight in the Premiership for a couple of years.

“I had an opportunity to come to Gloucester, change what I was doing, develop as a player and reach the next stage of my career which is Premiership rugby.”

“It was a difficult decision but it was made a lot easier as I knew quite a few of the senior players and got advice from people like Shaun Perry about moving clubs because he’d been through that process, and also others who were staying.”

“I’m still a Bristol supporter and always will be,” he added.

There have been a lot of changes at Gloucester over the summer with many players leaving the club and Attwood amongst a number of new faces.

There was also the long drawn out departure of Dean Ryan as Head Coach but Attwood says there’s a good atmosphere in the camp now.

“Buoyant is how I’d describe it,” he said.

“Everyone is looking forward to the new season, there’s a new regime and we’re quite excited about that.”