Chiefs can’t say bye bye to their injuries
Hot on the heels of their first loss of the Super Rugby season, the Chiefs have now been dealt a double dose of bad injury news, with All Blacks duo Angus Ta’avao and Luke Jacobson set for more time on the sideline.
The Chiefs have the bye this weekend, but coach Warren Gatland has his non-All Blacks training for the first half of the week, and gave an update yesterday on the status of his casualty ward.
Prop Ta’avao, who has reinvigorated his career since joining the Chiefs, notching 14 tests in the past two years, may end up playing a very limited part in the Super season, following a misdiagnosis on a leg injury.
The 29-year-old had seemingly hurt a knee in the opening-round win over the Blues in Auckland on January 31 and was considered a four-to-six-week recovery prospect. However, a scan on Monday revealed a quadricep tear instead.
‘‘We thought it was a knee contusion and a haematoma from the Blues game. It’s ended up being quite a significant tear in his quad,’’ Gatland said.
Ta’avao will see a specialist to assess whether rehabilitation or an operation is the way to go, and Gatland said he could be out for between eight and 12 weeks.
It continues a hapless run for the tighthead in 2020, as he had to have an ear cleaned out before the start of the season and was managing an achilles injury since the World Cup.
Meanwhile, there’s similar frustration for Jacobson, who just can’t catch a break early in his career.
The two-test loose forward was forced out of the All Blacks’ World Cup squad last September due to a recurrence of concussion and was targeting a return against the Sunwolves a fortnight back.
A tight hamstring kept him from doing so. It turns out it was that same hamstring issue which saw the coaching staff opt to not risk any further damage and pull the 22-yearold off just 10 minutes into his comeback match – the 26-14 defeat to the Brumbies in Hamilton last Saturday.
Gatland said it was a ‘‘neural’’ issue and Jacobson would miss at least the next match, against the Waratahs in Wollongong next Friday, but perhaps another couple of weeks after that too.
‘‘We thought he was 100 per cent and ready to go, from a running perspective he was good, but when you go out there, and it’s a full-on game, pushing in the scrums and mauling and stuff, it’s a load that’s hard to replicate from a training perspective,’’ Gatland said.
‘‘So we’ve just got to make sure that we do enough work on loading that up before he comes back.’’
The new was more positive for Nepo Laulala, with Gatland saying the 26-test All Blacks prop is a possibility to return to training next week after he injured a medial ligament in his knee against the Blues and was slated for six weeks on the sidelines.
While the All Blacks are absent from the Chiefs’ Monday-Wednesday training this week, there was a form of All Blacks presence there yesterday, with new scrum coach Greg Feek in for the day.
Gatland has made no secret he sees his job being to turn as many of his players as possible into All Blacks, and wants the national coaches to be able to contribute to his team ‘‘in any way they want’’.
‘‘It’s just having an open forum for them to come in and give us a different voice and different ideas,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s always healthy. We’ve said from day one this place is 100 per cent open for All Black coaches to come in.’’
Gatland said new All Blacks forwards coach John Plumtree is also planning to be in the week after next, ironically ahead of the Chiefs’ game against the Hurricanes – the team he used to coach.
‘‘So that should be a bit of fun, I’ll be trying to pick his brain a little bit,’’ Gatland quipped.