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Six All Blacks withdrawn from Japan tour

Rieko Ioane and Sam Whitelock. (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

Try-scoring machine Will Jordan is a major doubt for the All Blacks‘ northern tour beginning next weekend in Tokyo.

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Coach Ian Foster has revealed a raft of changes to his travelling squad as they fly out of New Zealand, with injury and bereavement forcing his hand.

The three Barrett brothers – Beauden, Jordie and Scott – have lost their grandmother and will delay travel to Japan.

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Jordan and veteran lock Sam Whitelock are both suffering from inner ear issues, with Foster particularly concerned about his winger.

“We’ve decided to leave them both at home until they are really clear,” he told reporters at Auckland airport.

New Zealand face Japan next Saturday and then Wales, Scotland and England over four consecutive weekends.

While Whitelock is likely to meet up with the squad in the UK, Foster was downbeat over Jordan’s chances.

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“Will is probably a little bit worse … we’ll see if there’s any value in bringing him over.”

In tough news for Folau Fakatava, the young scrum-half has ruptured his ACL graft after suffering the knee injury last year and could be in for another long spell out.

“It don’t look good. We’ll see whether it’s operable or a natural sort of fix … it’s devastating,” Foster said.

Brad Weber, Damian McKenzie and Patrick Tuipulotu have been brought into the squad as cover in the All Blacks XV squad.

Foster revealed Dane Coles was also struggling with a “mild calf issue”, with Asafo Aumua also travelling as cover.

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The injuries could spell trouble for the All Blacks, who are expected to be put to the test in Europe after Rugby Championship losses to Argentina and South Africa.

Foster said he was taking the threat of Japan seriously.

“Some of the noise out of there is they’re extremely confident,” he said.

“They’ve been building nicely, have been in camp for a long time and had three games against Aussie A so they’ll be ready.”

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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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