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Waratahs hit by shock training injury as Wallaby centre Foketi hospitalised
By AAP
Wallabies centre Lalakai Foketi has been taken to hospital in an ambulance after suffering a neck injury at NSW Waratahs training.
Foketi was treated for more than half an hour by medics after an apparently innocuous incident during training at the Waratahs' Daceyville base in Sydney on Thursday.
Coach Darren Coleman said the 29-year-old had movement in his fingers and the star's wife would meet Foketi at hospital.
The injury comes just two days before the Tahs' season-opening Super Rugby clash against the Queensland Reds at Suncorp Stadium.
Foketi, a member of Australia's World Cup squad last year and the scorer of the Wallabies' try of the season in 2022, had been named to start at inside centre in a star-studded midfield with Izaia Perese.
Coleman will almost certainly need to find a replacement and may consider promoting teenage sensation Max Jorgensen from the bench into the starting XV.
Jorgensen only made his comeback from a fractured fibula in a trial last Saturday against a combined Manly and Warringah outfit.
The 19-year-old survived 40 minutes unscathed after being forced home early from the World Cup in France without featuring in any of Australia's games.
Should Coleman go that way, Jorgensen would likely start at fullback and Joey Walton be shifted to the centres.
Otherwise Mosese Tupulotu, the brother of Scotland midfielder Sione, may come into the centres to team with Perese, allowing Jorgensen to be eased back into the fold as the Waratahs had hoped.
The Reds beat the Waratahs handsomely in Roma two weeks ago, before Coleman's side also lost comprehensively to the Melbourne Rebels in a second trial.
But prop Angus Bell insists there's no need for panic.
"We came into that week not wanting to show very much. You don't want to show your hand before you play them and certain things that we think will work against the Reds in a trial," Bell said on Thursday.
"It's not down to that. We weren't good enough in some aspects and gave them too much time.
"(But) we've gone the past two years winning all our trials and we've come into the season and got opposite results. Trial form doesn't mean much, it's about us getting back into our footy.
"We weren't happy with the results, but we're excited that we get to prove everyone else wrong this weekend when we beat the Reds at Suncorp."
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"fl's idea, if I can speak for him to speed things up, was for it to be semifinalists first, Champions Cup (any that somehow didn't make a league semi), then Challenge's semi finalists (which would most certainly have been outside their league semi's you'd think), then perhaps the quarter finalists of each in the same manner. I don't think he was suggesting whoever next performed best in Europe but didn't make those knockouts (like those round of 16 losers), I doubt that would ever happen."
That's not quite my idea.
For a 20 team champions cup I'd have 4 teams qualify from the previous years champions cup, and 4 from the previous years challenge cup. For a 16 team champions cup I'd have 3 teams qualify from the previous years champions cup, and 1 from the previous years challenge cup.
"The problem I mainly saw with his idea (much the same as you see, that league finish is a better indicator) is that you could have one of the best candidates lose in the quarters to the eventual champions, and so miss out for someone who got an easier ride, and also finished lower in the league, perhaps in their own league, and who you beat everytime."
If teams get a tough draw in the challenge cup quarters, they should have won more pool games and so got better seeding. My system is less about finding the best teams, and more about finding the teams who perform at the highest level in european competition.
Go to commentsWalter has been permanently psychologically damaged since his wife left him and moved in with a man from Sydney.
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