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Ex-Springboks Pienaar and Aplon suffer potential season-ending knee injuries
By Online Editors
Former Springboks Ruan Pienaar and Gio Aplon are set to miss the remainder of the Super Rugby Unlocked series in South Africa following worrying knee injuries in the Friday night match that the Cheetahs won 19-17 against the Bulls in Bloemfontein.
Veteran scrum-half Pienaar, who returned to the Cheetahs last year after a long stint in Europe with Montpellier and Ulster, was left in anguish on the ground at the Free State Stadium just 15 minutes into the round two game.
The Cheetahs skipper was ready to play the ball at a ruck when he was illegally clobbered by Bulls flanker Marco van Staden, an incident that resulted in just a penalty award. It put Pienaar out of the match and the 36-year-old was pictured later on crutches with his right leg heavily bandaged.
Aplon, the 38-year-old who returned to South Africa earlier this year from the Japanese Top League, had left the fray ten minutes before Pienaar's departure after he embarked on a run that left him nursing left knee ligament damage.
"Injuries are unfortunately part of the game," said Hawies Fourie, whose Cheetahs are now two wins from two in Super Rugby Unlocked after last month getting kicked out of the PRO14. "It was really bad to see that he [Pienaar] and Gio Aplon had to be taken off on the medical golf cart. We are thinking about them and hope that their injuries aren’t too serious. It's a big setback."
There was no confirmation as to how badly Pienaar might be injured, although the speculation was he had torn his MCL, but Bulls boss Jake White definitely wasn't too optimistic about the status of Aplon. “It’s all speculation (at this stage), but he himself thinks he’s done his ACL. He’s never done it before, so he says he isn't quite sure.
"I don’t want to pre-empt anything, but he feels that it is his ACL. He was basically running and as he stepped, the outside of his knee went. Hopefully, it’s not, but if it is, I just hope he gets better,” said White to media post-match.
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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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