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Injury-hit Hurricanes call on former Chief to plug gap at No 10

Orbyn Leger. (Photo by Bruce Lim/Photosport)

Two seasons on from Beauden Barrett’s departure, the Hurricanes are still struggling to replace the mercurial first five. While Jackson Garden-Bachop has clearly been identified as the long term successor to Barrett, an injury suffered against the Crusaders means that the Hurricanes have had to look elsewhere for five-eighths cover for their match with the Chiefs on Saturday.

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That cover comes in the form of former Chiefs and Blues utility back Orbyn Leger, who was signed up as an injury replacement after Simon Hickey went down in the pre-season.

Leger – who wore No 10 for the Chiefs in their opening game of the 2019 campaign – will partner Luke Campbell in the halves, who has taken over from Jonathan Taumateine.

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The crew of James Parsons, Ross Karl and Bryn Hall discuss the heavily debated calls by the television match official in both games of round three of Super Rugby Aotearoa.

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The crew of James Parsons, Ross Karl and Bryn Hall discuss the heavily debated calls by the television match official in both games of round three of Super Rugby Aotearoa.

Coach Jason Holland has made a number of other changes to a side chasing its first win of the season.

Salesi Rayasi, last year’s top try-scorer in the Mitre 10 Cup, has earned a start on the left wing. Julian Savea has shifted to the right, which sees Wes Goosen drop to the bench.

Billy Proctor and Peter Umaga-Jensen have swapped places, with Proctor taking over the No 13 jersey and one-cap Umaga-Jensen named in the reserves.

In the forwards, an injury to in-form hooker Asafo Aumua has seen Ricky Riccitelli slot in at No 2. Wellington’s James O’Reilly will cover from the bench in the continued absence of Dane Coles.

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The only other change also comes in the front row, with Xavier Numia handed his first start of the season, ahead of Fraser Armstrong.

This week’s changes mean that just four players – Tyrel Lomax, James Blackwell, Ngani Laumape and Jordie Barrett – will have been named to start in the same jersey in all three of the Hurricanes’ fixtures to date.

The Savea brothers will also have started in all three matches, but Ardie was named at No 7 for the opening game of the campaign while Julian’s first two matches were on the left wing.

Both the Hurricanes and the Chiefs will be desperate to earn their first wins of the competition on Saturday in order to give themselves even a faint hope at lifting the Super Rugby Aotearoa trophy later in the year.

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Saturday’s match kicks off at 7:05pm NZT from Sky Stadium in Wellington and will be broadcast live on RugbyPass for subscribers with a Super Rugby Aotearoa season pass.

Hurricanes: Jordie Barrett, Julian Savea, Billy Proctor, Ngani Laumape, Salesi Rayasi, Orbyn Leger, Luke Campbell, Ardie Savea, Du’Plessis Kirifi, Reed Prinsep, Isaia Walker-Leawere, James Blackwell, Tyrel Lomax, Ricky Riccitelli, Xavier Numia. Reserves: James O’Reilly, Fraser Armstrong, Tevita Mafileo, Liam Mitchell, Devan Flanders, Jonathan Taumateine, Peter Umaga-Jensen, Wes Goosen.

 

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J
JW 1 hour ago
Why England's defence of the realm has crumbled without Felix Jones

This piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.


I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.


Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.


The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.

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