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'Huge news' - All Blacks Savea surgery boost
By Online Editors
All Blacks flanker Ardie Savea could be back from knee surgery earlier than first thought, according to his former Wellington Hurricanes coach.
Savea, who was named last week as New Zealand Rugby's Player of the Year, was initially expected to be out of action for up to six months.
However former Hurricanes coach, John Plumtree, told reporters in Auckland the dynamic loose forward could be back within four months.
Plumtree was elevated into an assistant coaching role with the New Zealand team under new coach Ian Foster on Thursday.
"His operation wasn't as bad as they thought it was going to be, and we're hoping he's going to be right back into the Hurricanes set-up in about three-and-a-half months," Plumtree told Stuff Media.
"That's huge news for the Hurricanes because he is such an important player for them ... they won't rush him back if he's not right.
"Initially it was looking close to 5-6 months which is close to season ending. But it's not going to be that long."
Plumtree's move to the All Blacks continued a tumultuous off-season for the 2016 Super Rugby champions after influential All Blacks flyhalf Beauden Barrett chose to join the Auckland Blues.
Savea's injury, which he sustained in the Rugby World Cup semi-final loss to England, and Plumtree's move to the All Blacks, only added to their woes.
Plumtree's former assistant Jason Holland was promoted to the head coaching role at the Hurricanes.
Holland said that a possible transition had been discussed over the last few weeks as they looked ahead to the 2020 Super Rugby season.
"We never really knew what was going to happen," Holland told reporters.
"Nailing our stuff here between Plum and myself has been our focus and that's made this transition a lot easier."
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Latest Comments
Turn it up. Give me your john A game would ya!
Go to commentsI didn't really get the should tone from it, but maybe because I was just reading it as my own thoughts.
What I read it as was examples of how they played well enough in every game to be able to win it.
Yeah I dunno if Ben wouldn't see it that way (someone else would for sure need to point it out to him though), I'm more in the Ben not appreciating that those close losses werent one off scenarios camp. Sure you can look at dubious decisions causing them to have to play with 14 or 13 men at the death as viable reasons but even in the games they won without such difficulties they made a real struggle of it (compared to how good some of their first half play was). This kind of article where you trying to point out the 3 losses really would most likely have been wins only really makes sense/works when your other performances make those 3 games (or endings) stand out.
There might have been a sentence here and there to ensure some good comment numbers but when he's signing off the article by saying things like ..
and..
I don't really see it. Always making sure people are upto date with the SH standing/perspective! NZ went through some tough times with so many different perspectives and reasons why, but then it was.. amusing how.. behind everyone was once they turned a corner. More of these 'unfortunate' results returned against SA and France at the start of the RWC which made it extra tasty to catch other teams out when they did bring it. So that created some 'conscious' perspective that I just kept going and sharing re thoughts on similar predicaments of other teams, I had been really confident that Wallabies displays vs NZ were real, that the Argentines can backup their thing against Aus and SA (and so obviously the rest), and current one is that England are actually consistent and improving with their attack (which everyone should get onboard with), and I'm expecting a more dominant display against Japan (even though they should have more of their experienced internationals for this one) that highlights further growth from July. 👍
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