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Wallabies prop set to miss the rest of the season after 'demoralising' repeat injury
By Ben Smith
The NSW Waratahs have been dealt an early season blow with Wallabies prop Angus Bell set to miss the rest of the Super Rugby Pacific season after being injured against the Brumbies.
Bell has ruptured a ligament in his big toe on the right foot, a repeat of the injury that ruled him out of Wallabies contention in 2022 after injuring the toe against England in the July series.
The 22-year-old is set to spend up to six months on the sidelines, missing the entire Super Rugby Pacific season and facing a race against the clock to be fit for Eddie Jones' Wallabies season.
The dynamic loosehead prop adds to the Wallabies front row concerns with star tighthead Taniela Tupou sidelined for the Super Rugby season after tearing his Achilles against Ireland last November.
The two younger props offer athleticism and playmaking, with Bell showing his class early in the Waratahs loss by setting up a try for wing Max Jorgensen with a strong carry and offload.
He had just won a massive scrum penalty for the Tahs before his injury a quarter way through the game, but did not celebrate in any way having known something had gone wrong.
Waratahs forwards coach Pauli Taumoepeau called the injury 'demoralising' after Bell had worked his way back from the same injury last year.
"It’s demoralising,” Taumoepeau told Rugby.com.au.
“He’s done so much work to get to this point and he knew, he was silent.
“The scrum happened, we dominated, so as a forwards coach I was quite happy but he sort of caught my attention and I didn’t really understand what he was talking about.
"When I ran out there for him, he didn’t really give me anything other than getting 10 steps into it and he said, ‘My toe’s gone’.
“You could just tell it wasn’t good. He didn’t stop, he just kept walking straight past me back to the sheds. He knew straight away.
"I went back and looked at the footage. His reaction after a dominant scrum like that was he knew immediately what had happened.”
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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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