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Springboks rocked by Eben Etzebeth World Cup injury scare

Springboks lock Eben Etzebeth (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)

The Stormers and Springboks will be holding out with bated breath on news of Eben Etzebeth.

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It appears that the 27-year-old lock may have ‘broken his hand’ during the side’s 22-41 Super Rugby defeat to the Lions in Johannesburg on Saturday.

This is certainly not good news for the Springboks nor the Stormers, who already sit without the services of duo Siya Kolisi (knee) and Pieter-Steph du Toit (shoulder) due to injuries.

To make matters worse, it appears that Capetonians’ injury count is not subsiding as Fleck revealed the ever-increasing casualty list following the gruelling defeat in Johannesburg.

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Aside from the Bok giant, young lock Cobus Wiese could also miss next weekend’s actions after he picked up a hamstring injury.

“Our injury list is long,” Head coach Fleck said, adding: “It’s not just Siya [Kolisi] there are some big-name players we are missing like Pieter-Steph du Toit, Eben [Etzebeth] potentially broke his hand and Cobus Wiese did his hamstring so the injury list is long.

“We are really going to have to bring some youngsters through now and see how they go,”

It was not a good day at the office for the Stormers. Just before kick-off on Saturday, senior hooker Scarra Ntubeni was ruled out and replaced by Chad Solomon for his first Super Rugby start.

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The Stormers struggled with Lions’ ruthless attack. They only managed to produced three tries compared to the hosts’ six.

Reflecting on the game, Fleck added that he is disappointed, but admitted the injuries did not help his team.

“Obviously, I am disappointed with the loss but we were in it and did well to fight back in the first half. We were under some pressure but just too many disruptions to our team, too many injuries and that affected the way we played,”

The Cape Town-based team currently sit in 11th position on the overall log with two home games remaining against the Sunwolves and Sharks.

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They will need to win both games with a bonus-point and hope that other results go their way to secure a playoff spot.

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J
JW 35 minutes 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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