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Wallabies lose fly-half Larkham to injury

The Wallabies have lost influential fly-half Stephen Larkham for their rugby international against Wales in Sydney today.

Larkham failed to finish a training session on Wednesday with a strained right hamstring and was replaced yesterday by Sam Norton-Knight, who will make his international debut.

Larkham said he was taking no risks with the injury as the Wallabies embark on the first of seven Tests in the lead-up to the World Cup in France.

"It's very disappointing, but I suppose that it's early in the season and there's no point in taking any risks and that's what it would have been at this stage," Larkham told a press conference yesterday. "It's a bit of a strain of the hamstring tendon so it's a bit of an over-use injury in pretty high intensity at training this week."

"We will reassess it on Monday but if the game was in another couple of days then it would have been right," he said.

Larkham's injury withdrawal strips away a large block of experience for the Wallabies, who have chosen utility Matt Giteau at scrum-half and selected world rugby's most-capped player George Gregan (127 Tests) as a reserve.

But he said Norton-Knight would fit in well.

"Sam's played tremendously well not only this year but last year as well and has gained a lot of experience playing for NSW Waratahs, so the guys will be very comfortable playing around Sam," Larkham said. "He's trained there all of Wednesday afternoon and he's been in and out of the team for the rest of the training session."

Norton-Knight, 23, who was called up from outside the original 22-man match squad to make his debut, said he was "jumping out of his skin" with excitement after hearing of his promotion yesterday.

"It's obviously a different style of play when you come up to this level and it's been good to immerse myself in the detail over the last two weeks [training]," he said.
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