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Blues suffer big injury blow as Rieko Ioane among three players ruled out of action

(Photo by Renee McKay/Getty Images)

By NZ Herald

The Blues have suffered a series of potentially crippling blows to their Super Rugby campaign with three players sustaining serious injuries in the season-opener against the Chiefs at the weekend.

In a statement, the Blues confirmed All Black wing Rieko Ioane – who scored two tries at Eden Park – will be out of action for “several weeks” after fracturing his hand.

Hooker Ray Niuia has suffered a season-ending knee injury while prop Alex Hodgman has a calf tear.

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The Blues confirmed that veteran hooker James Parsons and first-five Otere Black are both expected to return from injuries as early as this week.

The Blues went down 37-29 after a second-half fightback from Warren Gatland’s team on Friday evening.

– More to come

This article first appeared on nzherald.co.nz and was republished with permission.

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Flankly 2 hours ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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