Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

Unfortunately for the Chiefs the world's best lock has his feet up amidst injury crisis

(Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

These are the players the Chiefs missed most when they lost to the Hurricanes in Hamilton on Sunday: Brodie Retallick, Daylight, Tyler Ardron, Anton Lienert-Brown…

They are also missing flanker Luke Jacobson and his hard shoulder on the tackle, prop Atu Moli’s sheer physical presence and hooker Nathan Harris’ set-piece nous and execution. All of this trio are crocked for the rest of Super Rugby Aotearoa.

Ardron left the franchise last week to take up a contract in France, despite having another year to run on his Chiefs’ deal.

But the Chiefs were always going to rue the decision of Brodie Retallick to take up a two-year stint with Kobe Steelers in Japan, which was to rule him out of the 2020 and 2021 Super Rugby seasons.

The Chiefs were always going to miss him more than the Hurricanes would miss Beauden Barrett, the Crusaders would miss Kieran Read and the Highlanders would miss Ben Smith.

That’s because the world-class 29-year-old lock, with 107 Chiefs caps to his name, drives much of the momentum of the Chiefs’ forwards work. He’s done that since he turned up at the age of 20 in 2012 and started cleaning out like a horizontal pile-driver, pulling down lineout ball and tackling like there was no tomorrow.

Then he added the softer touches, slipping passes that you just do not see from the Northern Hemisphere big men. Retallick is as complete a lock as you’ll see.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCSNZMrAOjq/

Ardon, the admirable Canadian, stepped up in 2019 to fill the void when Retallick missed eight games. The team hung tough and made the playoffs.

But he has now departed, Michael Allardice and the luckless Laghlan McWhannell are also gone for the season, and the Chiefs’ locking stocks are now as thin as balsa wood and green around the gills.

Naitoa Ah Kuoi left the field on a stretcher against the Hurricanes. He has played all 10 games in 2020, the last three as a starter, and acquitted himself well. But he needed a seasoned second-rower to help guide him.

Tupou Vaa’i, barely 20, is being promoted, possibly ahead of his time, despite clear promise. Taranaki’s Mitch Brown has stepped up manfully, but is more of a No 6 who can fill in at lock.

The Chiefs are creaking in the forwards, lacking the grunt that Retallick possesses in spades, even with the return of All Blacks’ skipper Sam Cane. Where they were commanding the loose ball pre-Covid, when Lachie Boshier was in fine touch, now they are ceding the collisions and set-pieces to opponents.

The net result is 0-4 on this side of Covid. It is no real surprise, but coach Warren Gatland must be dismayed that nothing is falling his way on the injury front.

Gatland, who was mystifyingly rated the greatest coach of all time by UK magazine Rugby World, must have been sorely tempted a few weeks ago to issue an SOS to Retallick, who is relaxing at his Hawke’s Bay home while his old team disintegrates.

Was there a case to sign Retallick to an injury replacement contract, somehow come to an agreement on how much insurance to pay Kobe, and let him loose on fringers at ruck time?

Chiefs fans will be cursing these accursed sabbaticals while their team, 4-2 by mid-March, and still well in the mix to win its third Super Rugby crown, will now do well to avoid the first wooden spoon of Super Rugby Aotearoa.

Meanwhile the Chiefs’ greatest lock, the world’s best lock, has his feet up (as is his contractual right) while the team that made his name hits the skids.

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE

{{item.title}}

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

0 Comments
Be the first to comment...

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

J
JW 5 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

144 Go to comments
TRENDING
TRENDING The Waikato young gun solving one of rugby players' 'obvious problems' Injury breeds opportunity for Waikato entrepreneur
Search