Tuesday’s rugby news has the Tahs and Force captaincy situations, Larkham hesitant to praise Hunt and no punishment for the George North incident.
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Hooper content without captaincy
Despite leading the Test side last year, Michael Hooper has said that he is content to leave the Waratah’s leadership to Dave Dennis, who suffered a season ending knee injury last year. “Dave does such a huge job there and such a good job, it’s fantastic to play with him and to play under him,” Hooper said.
In other Tahs news, giant winger Taqele Naiyaravoro is poised to fill one of the spots vacated by Alofa Alofa’s move to France, beating out Matt Carraro, youngster Andrew Kellaway and Test winger Peter Betham for Sunday’s match against the Force.
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Wykes promoted
The Force will be without their inspirational skipper Matt Hodgson, who will miss the first two months of the season with a torn hamstring, prompting coach Michael Foley to move lock Sam Wykes into the captaincy.
Foley recently signed a contract extension that will see him remain at the Force until the end of 2017. The Force finished 13th in Foley’s first year as coach but the Perth-based franchise came within a win of making the finals last season,with Foley now tipped to be part of Australia’s coaching team at this year’s World Cup.
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Hunt needs more time
With the Brumbies preparing to face Karmicheal Hunt in the Reds’ five-eight position in their opening Super Rugby match, former Wallaby great Stephen Larkham has said it was premature to put the former league player in Test contention.
“You don’t necessarily want to talk that far ahead at this stage,” Larkham said. “We’ll have to wait and see how he goes throughout the season with his consistency.” Hunt played 125 games for the Broncos, represented Queensland 10 times and had 11 caps for the Kangaroos.
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Welsh actions go unpunished
While Would Rugby (WRU) has distinctly stated that Welsh winger George North should not have stayed on the pitch after suffering his second head injury against England, the governing body accepted the team’s statement that neither Welsh medical staff nor the independent doctor saw the incident.
World Rugby, meanwhile, has also announced that it will be ‘immediately investigating, evaluating and promoting the implementation’ of new measures. This would include access to television replays which would show clear instances of concussion warranting the player’s removal.
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