All Blacks advance party ‘fizzing’ to play

Sitting up in bed watching an All Blacks test is a rarity for Sam Cane.

Vice-captain of the team these days, the openside flanker is more commonly seen scything down opposition ball runners or cleaning rucks. But with coach Steve Hansen opting to employ two parties for the trips to Argentina and South Africa, a few first-choice players got to enjoy a pretty irregular occurrence.

Cane, Sam Whitelock, Ryan Crotty, Lima Sopoaga and Liam Squire arrived in Cape Town on Friday, which meant setting their alarms for 12.40am on Sunday to see how the rest of the team fared in their test match against the Pumas in Buenos Aires.

Those who played in the 36-10 win at Estadio Jose Amalfitani got to Cape Town very late on Tuesday morning (NZT), to find five blokes looking rather more energetic than they were.

‘‘It’ll be up to us to lift them over the next 24 hours or so,’’ Cane said of his travel-weary team-mates.

Cane and company haven’t played since the 57-0 thrashing of South Africa at Albany and are primed for big performances when the teams reconvene at Newlands on Sunday morning.

‘‘We had that game [at Albany on September 16] and then you take a few days to recover, so to have a second week where we actually trained pretty hard at home [was beneficial],’’ Cane said. ’’We got through a fair bit of running and some tough gym sessions that you normally don’t get to do because you’re trying to get that balance between training hard and peaking on Saturday, so it was nice.

‘‘We got over here Friday ... [and] us five boys have been hanging out and fizzing for the boys to arrive.’’

Hansen is aware of how Argentina’s inclusion at Super Rugby and Rugby Championship level has increased the volume of travel. That’s why he’s opted to experiment with separate touring parties; albeit one’s only small.

Hansen doesn’t believe he’ll be able to judge its benefits until the end of the year, but in the short term the vigour and enthusiasm of the five-strong advanced party should lift everyone in Cape Town.

It remains to be seen whether South Africa can be more competitive at home than they were in New Zealand, but Cane was certainly suggesting they should be.

‘‘We’re very much in touch with the history and how tough past tests [against the Springboks] have been,’’ Cane said.

South Africa have boosted their squad numbers, with Wilco Louw, Dan du Preez, Raymond Rhule and S’busio Nkosi coming back in. That’s been offset by the loss of No 8 Uzair Cassiem to injury.