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Hughes ruled out of Samoa clash as Watson, Joseph omitted
By Christopher Devine
Nathan Hughes will miss England's final November international against Samoa due to a knee injury, while Anthony Watson and Jonathan Joseph have also been released from Eddie Jones' squad.
Hughes, England's first choice at number eight in the continued absence of the injured Billy Vunipola, has bone bruising in his right knee joint.
As a result, he has returned to his club, Wasps, and is set to require three to four weeks of treatment.
Watson impressed at full-back in England's win over Australia last weekend, but will not feature against Samoa on Saturday with Mike Brown available again. Brown missed the Australia game after suffering a nasty blow to the head in the previous week's match against Argentina.
Head coach Jones has also released Bath centre Joseph from his squad, together with Tom Dunn, George Kruis, Zach Mercer, Marcus Smith and Denny Solomona.
Bath flanker Sam Underhill will continue to go through his return-to-play protocols in camp after he was substituted early against Australia due to a head knock.
After beating Argentina and Australia, England will be expected to record another victory in their final match of 2017.
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To be fair it was nowhere bear the Leinster first team (for which, btw, Leinster copped nothing like the outrage that Jake White did for sending a rotated team to the UK). But it’s fun to watch the Stormers doing their thing. They are attracting big, diverse crowds of young fans, and deservedly so. Great to see.
Go to commentsIt might be legal but he’s sailing pretty close to the wind. Not a lot needs to go wrong for Finau to end up in the bin. Was it late? Not quite, but borderline. High? A couple of CM within the laws, no room for error with that one. Did he wrap the arms? There was a token effort to wrap one arm, the intent was clearly to hit with the shoulder. So yeah, it’s legal, just. But as we all know, a very slight change in the dynamics could easily have him seeing red. Hopefully not when it really matters.
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