All Blacks flyhalf Aaron Cruden is to make his Super Rugby comeback for the Waikato Chiefs from the bench tomorrow after suffering an unsettling neck injury during the second Test against Wales.
Cruden, who was not considered for the third Test in Dunedin, New Zealand, on Saturday, has been named among the replacements for the Chiefs (42 points) for their clash with the table-topping Canterbury Crusaders (45) in Suva, Fiji.
Former All Blacks flyhalf Stephen Donald, who led an understrength Chiefs side to a 40-7 thrashing of Wales’ midweek team on their tour of New Zealand, is to start the game instead.
Photo: AFP
Cruden was taken to hospital following a tackle by Wales’ Luke Charteris in Wellington, where the lock rolled over the top of him and caused the flyhalf’s neck to “crack.”
He was cleared of serious injury, but All Blacks coach Steve Hansen chose not to risk him for the third game in Dunedin, with Beauden Barrett starting instead.
Cruden’s fellow All Blacks Brodie Retallick, Sam Cane, Seta Tamanivalu and Damian McKenzie are all to start the game, with Nathan Harris and Tawera Kerr-Barlow also on the bench.
McKenzie was the only player not used by Hansen in the series sweep of Wales, with Cane and Retallick playing for significant periods of all three games in Auckland, New Zealand, Wellington and Dunedin.
Charlie Ngatai, the eighth Chiefs player named in the All Blacks squad, missed the entire series due to lingering concussion symptoms. He was not considered by coach Dave Rennie for tomorrow’s game.
Chiefs hooker Hikawera Elliott is to make his 100th Super Rugby appearance for the side. He also played one season for the Wellington Hurricanes.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier