Internationals
Aaron Cruden
Kieran Read
Steve Hansen has put a timer on flyhalf Aaron Cruden and No.8 Kieran Read to get match fit if they are to be slected for the first Test against England after lenghthy lay-offs.
Read is no longer feeling the symptoms of concussion and is fit and ready to play in the Crusaders last game before the international break.
The burly No 8 looked back to his old self as he ran with the national squad and All Blacks coach Steve Hansen indicated his star forward was likely to make his much awaited return for the Crusaders this weekend.
Geraint John
Geraint John has joined the Australian Sevens team as head coach, from Canada who enjoyed their most successful season to date.
The 51-year-old has been head coach of the Canada’s Sevens team since 2010.
John, from Carmarthen, Wales, takes over the reins from Michael O’Connor, who stepped down as Head Coach in February after six years in the role.
Cheetahs and South Africa hooker Adriaan Strauss has been banned for three weeks for a tip-tackle, ruling him out of the Wales series.
The Sanzar duty judicial officer Adam Casselden has accepted a guilty plea from Strauss for contravening Law 10.4 (j) Lifting Tackle, after he was cited during a Super Rugby match at the weekend.
Strauss has been suspended from all forms of the game for three weeks up to and including 21 June 2014.
Juandre Kruger has been added to the Barbarians squad to face England on June 1, a week before he is set to face his home-nation as part of the World XV.
The Barbarians game can be viewed as a warm-up match for a number of players who feature in both Dean Ryan’s Baa-Baas and Nick Mallett’s World XV
Juandre Kruger, Hosea Gear, James O’Connor, Francois Trinh-Duc, Rene Ranger, Schalk Ferreira, Mamuka Gorgodze, Sona Taumalolo, Jimmy Cowan, Andrew Hore, Alexandre Lapandry, Roger Wilson, Joe Tekori will all feature in both invitational teams.
Head coach Dean Ryan has at his disposal an experienced group totalling more than 700 international caps.
A dozen players have been added to the initial Barbarians group including Ireland lock Donncha O’Callaghan, France fly half Francois Trinh-Duc, South Africa second row Juandre Kruger and Argentina full back Juan Martin Hernandez.
Nine different nations are represented – six New Zealanders joined by players from Argentina, Australia, France, South Africa, Georgia, Ireland, Samoa and Tonga – and 19 players are set to wear the club’s famous black and white hooped shirt for the first time.
“It is a testimony to the special appeal the Barbarians has throughout the rugby world that we have been able to bring together such an experienced and talented squad of players,” head coach Ryan said.
“It’s a privilege to be able to work with a group who have achieved so much and we’re looking forward to taking on a young England side at Twickenham next Sunday.”
There is one change to the group of players previously announced with Castres-bound All Black Sitiveni Sivivatu now unavailable.
Barbarians squad:
Backs: Jimmy Cowan, Tomas Cubelli, Hosea Gear, Juan Martin Hernandez, Brock James, James O’Connor, Rene Ranger, Joe Rokocoko, Benson Stanley, Francois Trinh-Duc.
Forwards: Julien Brugnaut, Schalk Ferreira, Mamuka Gorgodze, Andrew Hore, Juandre Kruger, Alexandre Lapandry, Juan Manuel Leguizamon, Nahuel Lobo, Donncha O’Callaghan, Ti‘i Paulo, Sona Taumalolo, Joe Tekori, Roger Wilson, Davit Zirakashvili.
Victor Matfield & Bakkies Botha
“Blood brothers” Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha could be reunited as the Springbok lock pairing in Test matches this year, the Rapport newspaper indicates.
Botha, 34, recently returned to action for his French club Toulon after missing most of the year with a broken arm. He was a key figure for Toulon when they won the Heineken Cup final at the weekend, beating English club Saracens 23-6 at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.
Victor Matfield
Just a few months ago it would have been unthinkable, but the stage is set now for Victor Matfield to lead the Springboks into battle this year not only as a player, but possibly also as captain.
According to reports, with Jean de Villiers out for eight weeks with injury, Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer will have to find a new leader for the team as they head into four hard test weeks in June before embarking on a very important Castle Rugby Championship a year before the World Cup.
Much has been said about Matfield’s return to the playing field after he retired after the 2011 Rugby World Cup, but even now there can be few who don’t believe he is up to international rugby, even at the ripe old age of 37.
James Haskell has been included in the England squad, set to tour New Zealand, for the first time since the World Cup in 2011.
Haskell has had a checkered career which has included several foul-play bans as well as being expelled from school for a pornographic incident.
The big loose forward, who knows New Zealand well, had a stint with the Highlanders and was also a member of the England group that were involved in a series of controversial off-field events at the World Cup.
Jean de Villiers
Springbok captain Jean de Villiers will miss the Castle Lager Incoming Series next month after he was ruled out for approximately eight weeks with a knee injury.
After experiencing some discomfort in his left knee on Saturday morning, De Villiers was pulled out of the DHL Stormers’ Vodacom Super Rugby match against the Toyota Cheetahs.
De Villiers underwent a scope in Cape Town on Sunday morning and the prognosis is that he will be out of action for almost two months. He will hopefully be back by the start of Castle Lager Rugby Championship in August.
Daniel du Preez
Injured Sharks lock Daniel du Preez has been withdrawn from the South African Under-20 squad that will travel to New Zealand on Monday for the upcoming IRB Junior World Championship (JWC).
The 18-year old former SA Schools player is replaced by Johannes Vermeulen of Western Province.
Handré Pollard
South Africa Under 20 captain Handré Pollard has not been able to participate in the team’s build-up to the IRB World Junior Championship.
The tournament will be stage in New Zealand next month.
Despite the absence of two key players, Pollard (Bulls) and Thomas du Toit (Sharks), Baby Bok coach Dawie Theron is not concerned.
Pollard and Du Toit have been on Super Rugby duty.
Francois Louw
Ruan Pienaar
Overseas-based Springboks Francois Louw and Ruan Pienaar will be ready for action by the time the Boks play their first game this year.
Flanker Louw, who plays for Bath in England, has recovered from an ankle injury which ruled him out for the last nine weeks. He is expected to play for Bath in their Amlin Challenge Cup final against Northampton Saints at Cardiff Arms Park on Friday.
Scrumhalf Pienaar has also returned to action for his Irish club, Ulster, after being sidelined for four weeks.
Steve Tew
The New Zealand Rugby Union expressed frustration that Northern Hemisphere nations have refused to back calls to shift the June international window back a month.
Moving the mid-year Tests to July would stop them interrupting the Southern Hemisphere’s Super Rugby season and also give players a slightly longer off-season after years of complaints about too many matches.
Australia coach Ewen McKenzie on Thursday named four uncapped players in a 32-man squad for next month’s three-Test tour by France.
They included Western Force hooker Nathan Charles and three locks – the Brumbies’ Sam Carter, Melbourne Rebels’ Luke Jones and Will Skelton of the Waratahs.
The uncapped locks have been called up following the loss of Ireland-bound Kane Douglas, France-based Sitaleki Timani and Melbourne Rebels’ Hugh Pyle to overseas clubs.
“We’ve made a decision that we need to look forward and we’ve made an investment in guys that are going to be around (in Australia),” McKenzie said.
One of Scottish Rugby’s most capped backs will return to the Scotland 7’s squad, where his international career started, at this summer’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow (Ibrox Stadium, 26-27 July).
Glasgow Warriors’ winger Sean Lamont who has won 86 caps for his country and who was in the 2002 Scotland 7’s Commonwealth Games squad in Manchester has been named in Stephen Gemmell’s 12-man squad for Glasgow 2014. Lamont won his last World Series cap at Murrayfield in 2009.
Gemmell has also completed a major coup by securing the services of Scotland and Glasgow Warriors winger, Tommy Seymour who has won eight Scotland caps, but has not yet been involved with Scotland 7s. His selection follows some impressive performances for club and country that display a pedigree for the abbreviated game.
Francois Steyn
Alan Zondagh
Former Western Province coach Alan Zondagh says Frans Steyn should play ahead of Morné Steyn at flyhalf for the Springboks.
Morné was not included in the 36-man Bok training squad named earlier this week due to commitments with his French club, Stade Francais.
He is however expected to be included in the final squad to be named on 31 May and many pundits feel he will remain Meyer’s choice for the No 10 jersey.
Shaun Sowerby
Former Springbok No 8 Shaun Sowerby says Bok coach Heyneke Meyer should keep his eye on the South African players in France.
Sowerby, who was recently named as one of the EP Kings’ assistant coaches, played club rugby in France for 10 years.
The 36-year-old played a single Test for the Springboks in 2002 but was a stalwart for the Sharks, before moving to France in 2004 when he joined Stade Francais.
He also had a stint at Toulouse and finished his playing career at Grenoble.
Eben Etzebeth on the comeback trail
DHL Stormers behemoth Eben Etzebeth was named in the national training squad for next week’s camp in Durban, but it now seems unlikely that he will play for the Springboks in the June Test matches.
The big lock was doing his own drills with the fitness trainer as the Stormers trained on Monday as he gets used to putting weight on the ankle that was operated on after last year’s Springbok tour of the UK and France. But after saying at the weekend that Etzebeth had an outside chance of being ready to play against the Sharks on 31 May, Stormers coach Allister Coetzee has now ruled out that possibility.
Scotland will be without key players when they play the one-off Test match against the Springboks in Port Elizabeth.
New Scotland coach Vern Cotter has announced a double squad in order to cope with an arduous travel schedule, leaving some of the bigger names to play the North American leg of their tour only.
Players such as Chris Cusiter, Greig Laidlaw, Sean Lamont, Tim Visser, Kelly Brown, Richie Gray, Jim Hamilton and Alasdair Strokosch will only find themselves involved in the first squad to take on the United States and Canada.
Cotter’s reason for this is that some of his players will still be duty bound to French and English clubs with the Springbok match falling outside the Test window.
Centre Jaque Fourie is unlikely to feature for the Springboks this year due to an ankle injury.
According to reports, Fourie will undergo an ankle operation on Tuesday which could keep him out of the game for up to six months.
England head coach Stuart Lancaster has called up 18 players from Harlequins and Leicester Tigers to the England training squad that is preparing for the tour to New Zealand and the match against the Barbarians after the two clubs completed their domestic seasons.
The players will arrive at the Lensbury Club from Wednesday evening along with Sale Sharks’ James Gaskell and Ross Harrison. Bath Rugby’s Rob Webber joined the squad last night.
Further players will be added from Bath Rugby and London Wasps following the conclusion of the Amlin Challenge Cup final (23 May) and the European Rugby Champions Cup play-off second leg (May 24) with a further group from Saracens and Northampton Saints joining the tour party and the Aviva Premiership final (31 May).
Robbie Diack has been called up to Ireland squad for the summer test tour in Argentina next month, along with fellow South African and Ulster team mate, hooker Rob Herring.
Nine Ulster players have been named among the 30-man squad with Diack set to make his international debut should he be called into action.
World champion Springboks Victor Matfield and Schalk Burger as well as two former Blitzbok stars, Cornal Hendricks and S’bura Sithole, are included in a 36-man squad to attend a national training camp in Durban from 25 to 28 May, the South African Rugby Union announced on Monday.
Cell C Sharks back Sithole and Hendricks, the SA Sevens Player of the Year in 2013, are two of eight uncapped players in the squad. The others are the Toyota Cheetahs duo of Lood de Jager (lock) and Teboho “Oupa” Mohoje (loose forward); Marcel van der Merwe (prop) and Jacques du Plessis (flank/lock) of the Vodacom Bulls; Marnitz Boshoff (flyhalf) of the Lions and the DHL Stormers’ Damian De Allende (centre/wing).
They will join Matfield, Burger and Toyota Cheetahs flanker Heinrich Brüssow – who are back in the national set up for the first time since the last Rugby World Cup in 2011 – in a training squad that is missing a number of players due to injury.
Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer said he was happy with the form of a number of the country’s top players and the uncapped players who have grabbed their chance this season, as well as the re-appearance from retirement and long-term injury of Matfield and Burger.
England were left with an anxious wait to discover if full-back Mike Brown would be fit for next month’s tour of New Zealand after the full-back was injured in a gruelling Premiership semifinal on Saturday.
Harlequins star Brown, player of the tournament in this season’s Six Nations Championship, went off with a hamstring injury midway through the second half of his side’s 31-17 semifinal loss away to Saracens.
England coach Stuart Lancaster is already without regular full-back alternatives in Saracens’ Alex Goode and Northampton’s Ben Foden for the first of a three-test series against the world champion All Blacks in Auckland on June 7 as the pair will be required for the Premiership final at Twickenham seven days earlier.
Harlequins’ director of rugby Conor O’Shea, himself a former Ireland full-back, tried to still fears about the health of England’s first-choice No 15.
Versatile Vodacom Blue Bulls midfielder Rohan Janse van Rensburg has replaced his injured provincial team mate Duncan Matthews (wing) in the Junior Springboks squad for 2014 IRB Junior World Championship.
New Zealand will stage the 2014 JWC for the first time from 2 to 20 June in Auckland. Matthews was ruled out of action due to a back injury.
Danny Cipriani was named in an England squad for the first time in six years on Thursday as coach Stuart Lancaster has decided the mercurial Sale flyhalf is no longer a risk to his team’s esprit de corps.
Cipriani won all seven of his caps under Brian Ashton in 2008 – having been dropped from what would have been his debut against Scotland after being seen outside a nightclub days before a match.
His career then stalled and after he left Wasps for an ill-starred spell in Australia he has been involved in a series of off-field incidents – including being run over by a bus.
Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer is impressed by the form Stormers flank Schalk Burger has displayed in this year’s Super Rugby competition and said he would come into consideration for the national team.
Burger, 31, returned to Super Rugby this year after missing most of the past two seasons due to injury and illness.
In an interview, Meyer said Burger’s play this year has really impressed him.
Springbok coach Heyneke Meyer says Japan-based Boks Fourie du Preez, Jaque Fourie and JP Pietersen would be available for the June Test window.
While Pietersen has returned from Japan to play Super Rugby for the Sharks, Du Preez and Fourie finished the season in Japan and are currently in their off-season.
Western Force flyhalf Sias Ebersohn says he has a burning desire to play Test rugby and wouldn’t mind if it’s not for his country of birth.
The 25-year-old is having a stellar season for this year’s Super Rugby surprise packages, who have won seven out of 10 games and currently sit in a healthy fifth spot on the overall Super Rugby log and in with a real shot at making the playoffs.
Hooker Benjamin Kayser is to miss France’s three-test tour of Australia in June because of a neck injury, his club Clermont said on Wednesday.
Gavin Henson’s hopes of taking part in a Welsh trial match that could see him selected for next month’s two-Test tour of South Africa are set to be crushed.
The 32-year-old Bath centre, one of the most gifted players of his generation but with a chequered past off the field, has not played for Wales since being injured during a 2011 World Cup warm-up game against England in Cardiff.
However, he was included on Tuesday in a 26-man ‘Probables’ squad that will play the ‘Possibles’ at Swansea’s Liberty Stadium on May 30 in the kind of trial match that was a well-know fixture during rugby union’s amateur era but which Wales last used in 2000.
But it now appears unlikely that Henson, and other Wales players at Premiership clubs, will be released for the trial.
Vodacom Bulls flyhalf Handré Pollard will captain the Junior Springboks at the 2014 IRB Junior World Championship during June in New Zealand, South Africa Under-20 coach Dawie Theron announced on Tuesday.
EP Kings number eight Aidon Davis and Vodacom Blue Bulls fullback Jesse Kriel were confirmed as the two vice-captains.
South Africa’s Super Rugby teams may be struggling, but that doesn’t mean the Springboks will follow a similar trend in 2014, believes Western Force coach Michael Foley.
Foley said, after his side beat the Cheetahs 23-16 in Bloemfontein last weekend. They face the Stormers in Cape Town this Saturday.
Stormers backline coach Robbie Fleck believes utility back Damian de Allende is not far off from a Springbok call-up.
De Allende, 22, has been a rare shining light for the Stormers in a disastrous season which has seen them win only three of 11 games to sit bottom of the overall Super Rugby log.
A year from the Rugby World Cup, defending champions the All Blacks face a depleted talent pool to select from, as a wealth of players opt for lucrative overseas contracts.
Although there is an overflow of quality among the loose forwards and outside backs, in other areas there are looming shortages – particularly at hooker, where there is a struggle to find three of international standard for next month’s tour by England.
The reluctance of the Home Unions to come to the party is what is preventing a more acceptable global season to be implemented.
It has long been suggested that the selfish nature of Home Union officials – those from England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland – has been at the heart of the troubled and scattered international and domestic calendars.