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All Blacks prospect dealt injury blow on eve of new Super Rugby season
By Online Editors
Highly-touted Crusaders lock Quinten Strange has been dealt a cruel injury blow in the opening week of the 2020 Super Rugby campaign.
A broken bone in his right hand means the 23-year-old will miss the Crusaders' season-opening fixture against the Waratahs in Nelson on Saturday.
Strange sustained the injury during his side's 41-7 pre-season thrashing of the Highlanders in Wanaka last week, and is expected to be sidelined for up to five weeks.
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The fractured hand is especially painful for promising youngster, who was expected to line up alongside captain Scott Barrett in the second row this weekend, given that he will miss out on the opportunity to play in front of his home crowd at Trafalgar Park.
"Really gutted for him, especially heading into this game at home. Nelson College, Collingwood lad. He was devastated," Crusaders assistant coach Andrew Goodman told media on Tuesday.
Strange's frustration is understandable considering this week presented a rare opportunity for a starting role in the absence of All Blacks star Sam Whitelock, who is on sabbatical in Japan with Top League club Panasonic.
Whitelock, Barrett and Blues skipper Patrick Tuipulotu are all likely to return to the All Blacks this year, but with Brodie Retallick on two-season sabbatical in Japan with the Kobe Steelers, there will be at least one vacant spot in the national set-up that needs filling.
The departure of five-test former Highlanders utility forward Jackson Hemopo to the Mitsubishi Dynaboars seems to have paved the way for Strange, who is one of the highly-regarded young locks in the country, to challenge for a place in Ian Foster's squad.
However, this injury has provided an unwelcome delay to what's expected to be a coming-of-age season for the former New Zealand U20 representative.
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I think we need to get innovative with the new laws.
Now red cards are only 20 minutes, Razor should send Finau on a head hunting mission to hospitalise their 10 with a shoulder to the chops.
Give the conspiracy theorists a win.
Go to commentsEngland played well enough to win but couldnt score when they needed to and couldnt defend a couple of X-Factor moments from Telea which was ultimately the difference. They needed to hold the ball more and make the AB's make more tackles. Territorially they were good for the first 60. Defending their lead and playing pragmatic rugby in the last 20 was silly. The AB's always had the potential to come back. England still have a long way to go, definite progress would have been shown had they won but it seems they are still stuck where they were shortly after the six nations and their tour to NZ
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