Big man back for Chiefs
Retallick to return after six-week injury break but Cane and McKenzie set to sit out crucial Hurricanes game I woke up after it happened thinking it was pretty good in terms of pain, there wasn’t much at all.
Brodie Retallick has revealed an injury sustained in the Chiefs match against the Crusaders in early June could have seen him miss the rest of the season.
The star lock fractured the coracoid process in his right shoulder, which saw him miss six weeks of action. The difference between a fracture and full break is slim but had he broken it, he would have been off the pitch for up to six months.
“I woke up on the Monday after it happened, the Crusaders game, in All Blacks camp thinking it was pretty good in terms of pain, there wasn’t much at all,” Retallick said. “But I had the scan and it showed the fracture, so it was six weeks.”
The coracoid process is a structural feature of the shoulder bone which serves as the attachment site for a number of muscles and ligaments in the upper body, including pectoral and bicep muscles.
After a six-week layoff, Retallick has been cleared to return this weekend against the Hurricanes. The Chiefs go into it with a slim chance of claiming a home quarter-final — they need a 23-point win to overtake the fourth-placed Hurricanes.
While Retallick will be available, fellow Chiefs Sam Cane (concussion), Damian McKenzie (All Blacks stand down week) and Sean Wainui (shoulder) are set to be left out of the final regular season match when the side is named tomorrow.
Chiefs coach Colin Cooper said with their spot in the playoffs already booked, there was no point risking Cane, who was cleared to play after picking up a head knock in the win over the Brumbies at the weekend.
“Sam’s not a hundy,” Cooper said. “He passed his tests but he’s still not where he should be.”
The Chiefs made an interesting call in leaving McKenzie’s last All Blacks stand down week for the final round.
With fourth place still a possibility, the Chiefs will try to knock over the Hurricanes without their attacking star. All Black lock Brodie Retallick is making a timely return for the Chiefs after getting injured against the Crusaders early last month.
Cooper said it came down to making sure they had their best team on the field for what he deemed mustwin matches the last two weeks.
“We needed to beat the Highlanders and we needed to beat the Brumbies, and we couldn’t leave Damian out,” he said. “To the critics who think we should have rested Damian earlier, we’d have loved to. We just didn’t have the time with losing players, the inexperience of
the guys coming in next, we needed to have our most experienced and talented players to help them.”
It would be a big surprise to see the Chiefs beat the Hurricanes by enough points to clinch fourth but Cooper said that wasn’t how the team was thinking in the lead-up.
The match shapes as the last at home in a Chiefs jersey for a number of players, including Liam Messam, the team’s appearance record holder
who is heading for Toulon after the Super Rugby season.
“We still want to just go as hard as we can to try and win the game without a whole lot of ‘if they do this and we do that’ — I don’t like a lot of clutter, I like having a real aim and a goal of what we’re trying to do, and that is to farewell these boys if it is their last game in Hamilton.”
Brodie Retallick on his injury