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Super Rugby talent drain? Check out the line-ups for this pre-season game

Julian Savea and Sonny Bill Williams are among the big guns lining out

Stories of an apparent Southern Hemisphere exodus northwards since the Rugby World Cup in 2015 have been the fodder of media outlets both north and south of the equator.

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The haemorrhaging of player talent, especially from New Zealand’s Super Rugby sides, has been the focus of much debate and hand wringing.

However, if you look at the make-up of the Hurricanes versus Auckland Blues pre-season friendly in Auckland on Thursday afternoon, it’s clear there’s still a huge amount of firepower at the disposal of Super Rugby.

New Hurricanes recruit Ihaia West starts at flyhalf and will take on his former team in one of the game’s more interesting subplots. However, it’s the sheer number of outstanding players lining up that catches the eye.

The Hurricanes named their team earlier earlier today.

15 Matt Proctor
14 Julian Savea
13 Vince Aso
12 Ngani Laumape
11 Wes Goosen
10 Ihaia West
9 TJ Perenara
8 Gareth Evans
7 Ardie Savea
6 Brad Shields
5 Vaea Fifita
4 Sam Lousi
3 Ben May
2 Ricky Riccitelli
1 Toby Smith

Reserves: Asafo Aumua, James O’Reilly, Alex Fidow, Chris Eves, Fraser Armstrong, Murray Douglas, James Blackwell, Michael Fatialofa, Sam Henwood, Reed Prinsep, Blade Thomson, Jamie Booth, Jackson Garden-Bachop, Chase Tiatia, Ben Lam, Jonah Lowe, Trent Renata.

The Blues are also fielding a side heavily stacked with star power, not least Sonny Bill Williams and Jerome Kaino.

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The Blues starting team is:

1 Alex Hodgman
2 James Parsons
3 Ofa Tu’ungafasi
4 Josh Goodhue
5 Scott Scrafton
6 Jerome Kaino
7 Dalton Papalii
8 Jimmy Tupou
9 Augustine Pulu (captain),
10 Bryn Gatland
11 Rieko Ioane
12 Sonny Bill Williams
13 TJ Faiane
14 Matt Duffie or Jordan Trainor
15 Melani Nanai.

Second half team: Pauliasi Manu, Leni Apisai, Sione Mafileo, Patrick Tuipulotu, Gerard Cowley-Tuioti, Glenn Preston, Murphy Taramai, Akira Ioane; Jonathan Ruru, Daniel Kirkpatrick, Jordan Hyland, TJ Faiane, Orbyn Leger, Tamati Tua, Jordan Trainor.

Replacements: Mike Tamoaieta, Ross Wright, Jacob Pierce, Sione Havili, Sam Nock, George Moala.

While the exodus of talent north is a real phenomenon, the embarassment of riches at the disposal of New Zealand’s Super Rugby franchises suggest they’re more than able to take the hits and bounce straight back up.

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J
JW 45 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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