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Dane Coles to make first appearance of the year for Hurricanes against Highlanders
By Alex McLeod
Veteran hooker Dane Coles will make his first competitive appearance of the year this Friday after being named to start for the Hurricanes against the Highlanders at Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin.
Having been sidelined for the opening rounds of this year's Super Rugby Aotearoa due to a calf strain, the 34-year-old will play in his first competitive match since he started for the All Blacks in their final Tri-Nations match against Argentina last November.
Coles' inclusion in the match day side comes after the 74-test international featured for the Hurricanes Hunters, the franchise's reserve team, in their victory over the Hurricanes U20 side last weekend.
With 25 minutes of action under his belt, Coles, who has hinted this may be his last season with the Hurricanes, has been injected into the starting XV in place of the impressive Ricky Riccitelli as one of three changes made by head coach Jason Holland.
Experienced lock Scott Scrafton has recovered from an ankle injury to take the place of James Blackwell, while Wes Goosen returns to the right wing as Julian Savea misses the cut.
The only changes on the bench come at hooker, with Riccitelli replacing James O'Reilly, and in the No 23 jersey, where teenage prospect Ruben Love is primed to make his Super Rugby debut from after filling the vacancy left by Goosen in the reserves.
Love, the 19-year-old utility back who played for New Zealand Schools in 2019, has impressed Holland, who said the youngster's inclusion in the match day 23 was warranted following his work in training and throughout pre-season.
“We have both ends of the spectrum with Dane coming back in and Ruben potentially getting his first run which he has earned with the work he has done through the campaign,” Holland said.
“The squad came together in a positive frame of mind following last Saturday’s disappointing loss to the Chiefs and we collectively think we are not far away from getting things right.
"Despite the loss, we have taken some positives out of the match, especially from how we performed in the first half and we learnt from what went wrong in the second half.”
Following last week's 35-29 defeat to the Chiefs in Wellington, the Hurricanes remain winless in Super Rugby Aoteaora this season and are rooted to the bottom of the table with just one bonus point to their name.
Kick-off for the Hurricanes' clash with the Highlanders is scheduled for 7:05pm on Friday NZT.
Hurricanes team to play the Highlanders
1. Xavier Numia
2. Dane Coles
3. Tyrel Lomax
4. Scott Scrafton
5. Isaia Walker-Leawere
6. Reed Prinsep
7. Du'Plessis Kirifi
8. Ardie Savea (c)
9. Luke Campbell
10. Orbyn Leger
11. Salesi Rayasi
12. Ngani Laumape
13. Billy Proctor
14. Wes Goosen
15. Jordie Barrett
Reserves:
16. Ricky Riccitelli
17. Fraser Armstrong
18. Tevita Mafileo
19. Liam Mitchell
20. Devan Flanders
21. Jonathan Taumateine
22. Peter Umaga-Jensen
23. Ruben Love
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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