Marquez too good
Spain’s Marc Marquez stormed to his sixth consecutive victory at the MotoGP Grand Prix of the Americas in Austin, Texas yesterday, launching the four-time champion back near the top of the season standings. Marquez has won every race on the Circuit of the Americas track since it first hosted MotoGP in 2013. His latest win pushed Marquez to second in the season standings behind Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso. Movistar Yamaha’s Vinales finished second and Suzuki’s Andrea Iannone third.
There will be more pain before the Blues get back on the right track. It was an ominous message from All Blacks coach Steve Hansen yesterday, but not an unexpected one.
The Blues have struggled mightily over the past decade and show no signs of righting the ship this year.
Since 2008, the club have made the playoffs just once, in 2011, where they fell to eventual competition winners the Reds in the semifinals. It was also the only time in the past 10 seasons the club notched up doubledigits in the wins column.
“It’s not an easy fix,” Hansen said at the All Blacks’ foundation day in Wellington yesterday. “It’s something that’s going to take some time and there will be pain along the way.
“We are feeling for them, there’s no doubt about that.”
The fact the Reds won the competition when the Blues last made the playoffs was, in itself, telling, as New Zealand teams hadn’t dropped a match against a team from across the ditch in the past 35 encounters.
Despite the talent in their ranks, with the likes of All Blacks Patrick Tuipolotu, Matt Duffie, and Rieko and Akira Ioane among those to pull on the blue jersey each week, they had been unable to win.
Hansen said it was tough for the team from New Zealand’s most populous region to be struggling this way.
“Everyone’s working hard up there and we’re trying to do our best to help them any way we can.”
The majority of the Blues’ All Blacks were in Wellington for the day, although Tuipolotu was unable to attend due to illness, with the first All Blacks squad for the year due to be announced on May 20. They were joined by a host of North Island-based All Blacks, which included Hurricanes halfback TJ Perenara. He was in the spotlight recently in sharing his support for the LGBT community on social media.
Hansen addressed Perenara’s comments, and said he was “really proud” of how the halfback addressed the situation.
“You’re a good human being regardless of whether you’re a gay person, a straight person. Quite frankly [the All Blacks] don’t care and I don’t care personally myself,” Hansen said.
“But I thought he tweeted well, his words were good, he gave a strong message to those young people in the circumstances that they could be fighting and worrying about their own identities. I said I was proud of him and I stick by that.”
The Hurricanes have lost hooker Asafo Aumua for the rest of the Super Rugby season with a wrist injury.
The 26-year-old has undergone surgery on a fracture which had forced him to miss the last-start win over the Chiefs.
Aumua is tipped to spend six weeks in a cast and the same period of time for rehabilitation, meaning a late August return to rugby.