Monday’s rugby news has David Pocock ruled out for the rest of the series, England’s best still to come, no mass changes expected for the Wallabies and Eddie Jones lashed out at former Wallaby Stephen Hoiles.
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Pocock Out
Wallabies backrower David Pocock has been ruled out for the rest of the Wallabies test match series with England after fracturing his eye socket.
Wallabies coach Michael Cheika estimated Pocock would be out for six to eight weeks.
Pocock tweeted: “Thanks for all the messages. I’ll be cheering on the @qantaswallabies over the next two weeks. #AUSvENG#StrongerAsOne”
“It is a blow no doubt. We are weighing up options to go like for like or a change up” Cheika said.
“We have Wycliff Palu, Benny McCalman and Sean McMahon so we have different options for what we want in the backrow,” Cheika said.
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Best Still to Come
England coach Eddie Jones has warned that their best is still yet to come in their test match series with the Wallabies.
“We’ve made history today but that’s not good enough for us. It’s all about Saturday night in Melbourne,” Jones said.
“We can’t get too excited. All we have done is give ourselves one more game in the series.
“The way we executed, at times, was very good.
“We were able to put set piece pressure on and they struggled to handle that.
“(Flanker) James Haskell was really outstanding for us, physically good and some of the things he did in defence gave us momentum in the game.
“We didn’t play well today. We can improve significantly with our ball carries, our second-man (into the tackle) work, defensive spacing and we can add even more set piece pressure.”
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No Big Changes
Michael Cheika has ruled out any major changes for the Wallabies next test match against England in Melbourne.
“I don’t think too much (change), maybe the odd tweak here or there,’ Cheika said.
“I’m not going to say I was happy because you feel sick when you lose especially in a Test match in front of a great crowd like that.
“There was a lot of things I thought went well too.
“I’m not one of those guys who’ll fake positivity…there are a lot of things I thought went well, we’ve just got to make them go well for longer.”
Meanwhile, Matt Toomua may be in the mix to fill in the inside centre position after recovering from a knee injury.
Cheika has indicated that he would be fit for selection if required, however, he was not named as a new member of the Wallabies squad which flew to Melbourne on Sunday night to prepare for the second test match against England.
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Jones Lashes Out at Hoiles
Eddie Jones has labelled former Wallaby Stephen Hoiles as disrespectful following a question from Hoiles in the post match press conference.
Hoiles asked: “You seem to be in the press a bit more than Donald Trump this week and the lads were pumped up, there was a bit of moisture out there and I think you and Glen [Ella] had a good moment, looked lubed up and a fair bit of shrinkage. How did you enjoy that moment with your old mate Glen up in the box?”
Jones replied: “Sorry? Repeat the question mate, I don’t like the tone of the question mate … are we not allowed to enjoy a win mate?”
When asked about the question later Jones stated: “You’ve seen the promotions Fox Sports have been running this week and the kind of questions we get – it is quite demeaning, disrespectful to the team, so we’re not going to let this opportunity pass.
“Without a doubt. You get that sort of ridiculous question from Hoiles. You’ve seen the Fox promos, they are disgusting. All I am saying is there’s been quite a disrespectful way in which the team has been treated in the media here. I don’t talk about that to the team. We talk about rugby.
“I am sure they are all going to be lining up mate. There has been a row of ex-Wallaby players – you’ve had Hoiles, you’ve had [Simon] Poidevin and you have had [Phil] Kearns. Campese has got to be somewhere. He is coming for sure. I can see next week something is going to happen.”
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