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Another All Black set to miss start of Blues Super Rugby campaign
By Ned Lester
Blues captain Patrick Tuipulotu will have some company on the sidelines for at least the opening week of Super Rugby Pacific, with Akira Ioane set to miss time with a calf injury.
While Tuipulotu is nursing a broken jaw, which occurred during the first half of the team's opening pre-season contest in Japan, former All Black utility forward Ioane suffered his injury in January during training.
Ioane was absent from both team sheets while the Blues were in Japan for their Cross-Border rugby fixtures, and his name was again missing when the team named their squad for the final pre-season hit out against the Chiefs, a game being played in Takapuna on Friday afternoon.
“It’s a shame Aki has picked up a calf injury so he will be late into the competition,” Blues head coach Vern Cotter told the Herald on Thursday. “He’s knocking people around at training so he’s just about ready to come back in. He won’t be ready for round one, maybe round two but more likely round three.”
While Ioane faces a delayed start to the season's festivities, his Blues teammates who featured in the Rugby World Cup last year are making a return to action after an extended break.
Rieko Ioane, Finlay Christie, Mark Tele’a and Dalton Papali’i will all see their first minutes of action since the Rugby World Cup final, while Caleb Clarke was eager to return early and so got some quality minutes under his belt in Japan.
They will face fellow World Cup final participants in Damian McKenzie, Samisoni Taukei'aho and Anton Lienert-Brown, with Luke Jacobson and Tupou Vaa'i also named for the Chiefs.
The season kicks off next weekend, the 23rd of February, when the Crusaders visit Hamilton for a final rematch. Ioane will miss the Blues' opening contest against the Fijian Drua, potentially also Super Round in Melbourne where his team play the Highlanders and as Cotter said, he could return for round three against the Hurricanes.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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