Rugby: All Blacks midfield looking fragile
4:00 AM Wednesday Aug 17, 2016
Malakai Fekitoa is now an almost certain starter on Saturday. Photo / Brett Phibbs
If the Wallabies didn't already know the All Blacks' probable
midfield selection, they do now following a knee injury to George Moala
which has ruled him out for up to four weeks.
No Moala means the
All Blacks effectively have no choice now but to pair Ryan Crotty with
Malakai Fekitoa and most likely put the uncapped Anton Leinert-Brown on
the bench for the opening Bledisloe rugby clash in Sydney on Saturday.
The
All Blacks may have been planning to pair Crotty and Fekitoa anyway -
this being the combination they picked for the first and second tests of
the season.
But a nasty facial cut to Fekitoa early in the
second test ruled him out of the third against Wales, and in his absence
Moala came into the No 13 jersey and gave a powerful and accomplished
performance that may have pushed him into the job longer term.
That
option, though, has gone after Moala took a blow to his knee in
training on Monday and was shortly after told he had damaged medial
ligaments.
All Blacks assistant coach Ian Foster wouldn't reveal
what the coaching team were thinking in regard to their midfield set-up
had Moala been fit. Nor was he of the view that the injury to Moala,
which comes only a week after Sonny Bill Williams was ruled out for the
remainder of the year with a torn calf, had left the All Blacks in any
particular state of desperation or panic.
"It is pretty
disappointing," said Foster. "He [Moala] came in as a replacement player
in June, really took his opportunity well and then he did an elbow [in
that same test] so he has been out for a while. He came back in
fantastic shape so signs are looking good but he's had a temporary
setback.
"But that happens in this business so he will go away
and get that right and hopefully he'll come charging back sooner or
later."
Given the stability and experience the All Blacks had in
their midfield the last time they played the Wallabies, the new look
combo will be viewed as potentially vulnerable.
For the better part of the last decade, the All Blacks were able to
field Ma'a Nonu and Conrad Smith in tandem and create one of, if not the
game's best midfield partnership.
Replacing those two
individually and as a combination was always going to be one of the
bigger challenges of 2016, but Foster remains confident that despite the
various injury setbacks, progress has been about as good as could be
expected.
"It is certainly different," he says of the probable
midfield make-up. "People are used to the Nonu-Smith and chuck Sonny
Bill in there as well. I wouldn't say we are vulnerable but we are
building combinations.
"I don't know whether that is an area they [Wallabies] are going to
target or not but it is an area where there is no hiding the fact that
we have players there who are less experienced than the players who have
been there in the past.
"But if you look at the guys we have got
there, well Ryan [Crotty] has a number of tests under his belt and
Malakai is the same."
