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Sonny Bill Williams to miss Bledisloe, but more hope for Coles
By Peter Thompson
Sonny Bill Williams will miss the Bledisloe Cup matches this month, while Dane Coles could return for the latter stages of the Rugby Championship after playing for Wellington in the Mitre 10 Cup.
Williams damaged his shoulder during the Test series win against France and the centre will not be considered to face Australia in Sydney on August 18 or at Eden Park a week later.
Coles, who has been plagued by knee and calf injuries, will not feature for the world champions until the end of next month at the earliest, but the hooker has been named in an All Blacks training squad.
"More than likely we will name him [Coles in the Rugby Championship squad] so we can have access to him as the season goes on." said Hansen.
"But he will come back through the Mitre 10, and play various amounts of minutes there. Once he's had enough rugby, he'll come to us,
"We just need to get him fit, he needs to get a bit more intensity into his training and that's going to take a wee while. We've just got to get him running fit so we can get the old Colsey back."
Chiefs prop Nepo Laulala will miss the Rugby Championship with a broken arm.
The All Blacks will this week meet for a two-day training camp in Christchurch.
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I've not watched any of the Top 14, but am I right that he was very very good for the first couple of weeks, and then has been pretty ineffective since?
Go to commentsVery good point. I think the CO2 cost of international sport is a big taboo today (and it doesn't look like it'll change anytime soon unfortunately for all humans).
Regarding your second point, I fully agree as well. We have seen this very one-eyed backlash of the French policy on the July tour, most people refuse to see that the best SA players are suffering from the exact same problem : accumulated fatigue from playing too much without significant breaks. The Boks and the Argentinians played the world cup, the URC/Top14/Premiership, the July series, the Championship, etc, etc, with almost no compulsary resting period. This has to change, for the sake of the players, and in fine for the sake of the sport !
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