Lock stocks barrelled
Just as the Chiefs, and quite likely the All Blacks, were breathing a big sigh of relief over Samipeni Finau, they have another concern on their hands in Josh Lord.
As the four-test lock was preparing to return from a second ankle injury, in a season that has seen him limited to just three games, he suffered an issue with his knee which is likely to see him miss the rest of the Super Rugby Pacific season.
The 23-year-old had been put on ice last week to ensure he was fully set to go against Moana Pasifika in Auckland tomorrow but now Chiefs coach Clayton McMillan has something of a perfect second-row storm on his hands after Lord suffered yet another setback.
“We’re just going through a process with Josh at the moment. We were a little concerned that some of the injuries around his leg were taking a little longer to heal than what we anticipated, so we should know more in the next 24 hours,” the coach said yesterday, adding that it was “quite possible that it could be a longer-term injury”.
That is not expected to extend too far past the end of the Super season, however, leaving Lord in the frame for new All Blacks coach Scott Robertson, but certainly well under-done for a national side going into a season without two of their best-ever locks in Sam Whitelock and Brodie Retallick.
The 2.03m Lord, who played two tests in 2021 and two more last year, has appeared in just 22 of the Chiefs’ last 52 games, with a serious knee injury (ruptured ACL) in 2022 accounting for much of that absence.
With Jimmy Tupou nursing a facial fracture, Finau, who has experience at lock, unavailable, and McMillan not wanting to risk Naitoa Ah Kuoi, who limped off with an MCL knee issue early in last Saturday’s 56-7 romp over the Force, Hamilton Burr has been called upon to provide second-row cover from the bench.
Burr, a 27-year-old Scotsman, played two matches for the Chiefs in 2022 and is more at home on the side of the scrum.
The outlook for Finau, meanwhile, is, as McMillan expressed on Saturday night, much brighter than it potentially looked like being for the in-form one-test All Black, following the bang to the AC joint in his left shoulder.
“Thankfully there’s no dislocation and no breakage in there, so he’s just got to follow a pretty diligent return-to-play plan, and we anticipate that’ll be anywhere between three and four weeks,” McMillan said.
In the backline, fellow one-test All Black Shaun Stevenson remains sidelined by a hamstring injury picked up against the Waratahs the round before last, but is back training and on track for a possible return against the Rebels in Melbourne next Friday.
That’s a fixture Damian McKenzie will also be targeting, with his mandatory 12-day concussion stand-down ending the day before, and McMillan confirming his star No 10 had “bounced back pretty quickly” in what is doubling up as his second and final All Blacks rest week.
His absence, along with the resting of fellow first-five Josh Ioane, sees another chance for youngster Josh Jacomb, who hasn’t featured since starting the Good Friday loss to the Crusaders in Christchurch, with Rameka Poihipi on hand to cover playmaking duties from the bench.
Elsewhere, captain Luke Jacobson is back in the starting line-up, again at No 7, after a shoulder injury kept him out of the Waratahs game.
One of several players rested is All Blacks winger Emoni Narawa, who has scored in each of his five starts (eight tries) since his return from a serious back injury.
Liam Coombes-Fabling is set for his first outing since round three, and Gideon Wrampling joins the reserves.