Whitelock and Crotty back, maybe Cane

AUCKLAND: The news on the injury front has turned out to be about as good as the All Blacks could have hoped for with captain Sam Whitelock, Sam Cane and Ryan Crotty all available for the first test against France this Saturday.

The only disappointment is that Brodie Retallick has been ruled out with a pectoral injury, the full extent of which will be known today, when he can have a scan to properly assess the damage.

As a precaution, Highlanders lock Tom Franklin, Crusaders counterpart Luke Romano and Crusaders flanker Matt Todd were yesterday added to the squad as cover.

The return of Whitelock offsets the loss of Retallick and the return of Crotty offsets the loss of Sonny Bill Williams.

If Cane can come through training unscathed, and the medics are hopeful he will, his availability will be a major bonus and the All Blacks will feel they have enough experience in all their positional units.

All Blacks coach Steve Hansen made it clear yesterday that the Jordie Barrett and Rieko Ioane

incidents had been dealt with inhouse and he was not going to discuss them publicly.

He is understandably eager to keep distractions to a minimum this week, knowing the All Blacks have struggled in previous years to get themselves ready for the first test of the year.

It is particularly hard when

there are intense Super Rugby games the weekend before, as it is challenging for the players to be involved, as the Highlanders and Hurricanes were, in heated local derbies and then come together as a team the next day.

Then there is the added difficulty of getting the players into test football mode. Super Rugby

is fast and furious and the skills that come to the fore are not always those that matter in test rugby.

The step up to test football is significant and the coaches have to labour the point that the penalties for being 1% off on Saturday are extreme in comparison with Super Rugby. Which is why Hansen will have been alarmed at some of the loose behaviour over the weekend and why he was also at pains to talk about the importance of the two training camps that were held in the last two weeks of May.

‘‘We would have been setting ourselves an impossible task if we hadn’t had those camps,’’ Hansen said. ‘‘A lot of people may not understand that you have the five groups of different players coming into one environment.

‘‘They have had three months to get ready for their first game and we have got seven days, so to not have had those camps and be able to get some information into the players, we would have got to this point and had information overload.

‘‘We have got to try to get to Thursday and not worry too much about what we don’t know but get excited about what we do know.’’