Tuesday’s Rugby News will require in-depth knowledge of human anatomy as we cover heads, shoulders, necks and, hang on. That’s not right.
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Sam Cane’s Neck
All Black openside Same Cane has suffered a year-ending neck injury.
Now, it would be easy to throw the cat amongst the pigeons and find highlights of All Black players putting the necks of their opponents into dangerous positions, or we could highlight Steve Hansen’s take on Pocock getting neck rolled “…no wonder he’s got a sore neck. He’s got his head over the ball 90 per cent of the time….” or his similarly flippant take on Remy Grosso’s injury, but this is neither the time, nor the place for that.
Save your slanderous (or libellous) comments for another time.
The loosie picked up the injury in his side’s 32-30 win over the Boks at Loftus.
Speaking afterwards, Kiwi team doctor Tony Page described the injury as a “small fracture in the lower part of his neck”.
Cane has undergone surgery and he and Dr Page will remain in Pretoria for the rest of the week before a likely return to their homeland next weekend.
It will mark the start of a long(-ish) road back to the pitch, Dr Page laid out what his player/patient was facing, “We have every confidence he will do well with the operation and like any fracture it takes a couple of weeks – months, so it will probably take about three months for the bone to get strong and we’ll take it step by step” and although (to me) looking and sounding distressed the good Dr didn’t seem to worried adding, “ The operation is really just to keep everything in the right place so the bone can heal on its own accord”.
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Rob Horne’s Shoulder
It’s the game played in heaven for a reason.
There’s a great bit in Dan Crowley’s book, Undercover Prop, where talks how he didn’t so much enjoy playing rugby, such was the brutality of it, but instead he enjoyed having played rugby. The friendships formed on and off the field made up for the physical clashes on it.
There’s no finer example of this than what happened over the weekend between Northampton and Leicester.
Having seriously injured his shoulder in the match between the two teams earlier this year Australian Rob Horne begrudgingly took centre stage as the sides went into battle again.
The match was moved from Saints’ home ground, Franklin’s Gardens, to Twickenham and the great unwashed got behind it in droves with the attendance placed at 40,013.
After the standing ovation to welcome to Aussie ground there was still a game to be played but I think we can all agree the real winner on the day was rugby.
Although more correctly, the real winners were the Tigers, a fact not lost on Saints’ director of rugby, Chris Boyd, “The loss is painful, the fact it’s a local derby is painful, the fact we wanted to respect Rob Horne and we couldn’t get it across the line is also painful. It’s not a very happy changing room” he said afterwards.
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Michael Cheika’s Head
Isn’t rolling….just yet.
Cheika will front the RA board this week where, “He will present to us his thoughts of the last two games” (Raelene Castle, 2018) and hopefully, for the long-suffering fans of the game in this country, an explanation about just exactly what the redacted has been going on with the team all year.
It comes on the back of a down and down and up and down and down and up Rugby Championship which saw the Wallabies teetering on the brink of their first last place since the Argies joined the comp and the national team’s slide to 7th on the world rankings.
One could be forgiven for wondering just how influential that second forty had on the board’s position and Castle didn’t hide it either, “The second half, they’ve now shown what they are capable of but it doesn’t put lipstick on the proverbial,” she said.
And despite the growing calls, if your social media feed is anything like mine, the RA chief put the kybosh on any suggestion of Cheika going the way of McKenzie (yeah, yeah, he resigned….)
She added, “We’re not talking about Michael Cheika being sacked as the head coach. I don’t think that that is the scenario that we are talking about”.
Which seems at odds with her next statement which seemingly eluded to wholesale reforms for the men in gold.
“We’re talking about changes to the whole environment”
Just not the head coach, eh?
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Toomua’s and TPN’s…..arms?
Well, they have arms, and it makes my headlines work, so just, ok?
In a move that will no doubt raise eyebrow/s, coach Cheika has announced he might overlook hooker Tatafu Polota-Nau and flyhalf/inside centre Matt Toomua when he announces his squad to tour Europe later this year.
Both players were brought out from England to bolster Australia’s stocks during the RC and with 124 test caps between them added a wealth of experience to a side that struggled throughout the tournament.
Who will step into the void to replace them remains a mystery. Toomua ended the tourney riding the pine as he fell out of favour, giving way to the Foley-Beale 10-12 combo that spluttered, misfired and roared to life at various times.
TPN’s place might be a little easier to fill. If you were one of the brave souls who didn’t throw their telly out the window at half-time on Sunday you would have witnessed Tou Latu’s blockbuster cameo helping the Wallabies come storming back into contention.
Latu’s performance certainly wasn’t lost on the coach,
“He was excellent. I thought he was outstanding,” he said.
“That shows that guy, how much talent and ability he has”.
“Consistency is the thing he needs to bring so he can be there in the spot or competing for the spot every week”.
Ahh, the C-word of Australian rugger, consistency.
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