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Senior trio back in from the cold

Marc Hinton

Sam Cane, Dane Coles and Sam Whitelock can start polishing up their boots, with the returning senior All Blacks all but green-lighted to run out against the USA in Washington DC next week.

All Blacks coach Ian Foster confirmed on a Zoom call to media yesterday that he was very keen to get the five additions to his squad, who flew out of New Zealand for Washington on Thursday night, straight into action against what is shaping as an under-strength US side.

Foster and his Australia-based squad depart Brisbane early tomorrow for an expected 30-hour journey to the US capital, where they will join Cane, Whitelock, Coles, Shannon Frizell and new face Josh Lord, who will be waiting for them.

With five tests in as many weeks to unfold, and some tough ones among Wales, Italy, Ireland and France that will follow the American hitout, Foster said there was very much a two-week, twosquad plan being put together, with some flexibility to go with it.

An early group of All Blacks will fly out of Washington for Wales on the Friday before the US game – a scenario that Foster said was mainly influenced by flight availability.

‘‘We’ve got to get a final check on Shannon who has been out a few weeks with a shoulder, but his signs are looking good. The reality is they’re all going to be in contention, and once we all join up

late Sunday we’ll have a good assessment and plan our programme.

‘‘We’ll be looking with a two-game mindset, and we’ve already flagged that for the likes of Sam Cane and Dane, who have been out for a while with injury, this will be an ideal game to get them back in there.’’

Foster said with the travel factor thrown in, it made sense to approach the start of the tour with the first two squads at least pencilled in.

‘‘We’ll be putting some guys who have had limited game-time into the USA game, and there are a couple of positions we’ll be putting guys in who have got a good chance to play their way potentially into Welsh selection.

‘‘We’re using it in many ways – to give game-time to some and grow their experience but also putting the heat on some areas of our game we feel we need to keep growing and look at some wider options. It’s a bit of both for us.’’

Foster said he would be taking a fully fit group to the US, with Dalton Papalii fit again after missing the last couple of tests against the South Africans.

Those twin matches against the world champions – a win and a loss in similar circumstances – had formed an important backdrop for this second stage of the All Blacks’ long stint on the road, Foster said.

‘‘The great thing about the Rugby Championship was we finished with those two tests against South Africa and probably got exposed to a lot of what will be coming on the northern hemisphere tour. It was great preparation.

‘‘It’s been three years since we’ve been up there, so we’ve got a lot of players who wouldn’t have seen a lot of big stadiums up north and been exposed to the rugby there.

‘‘So it’s going to be a great learning curve. We’ve just got to keep driving our standards and we want to keep playing well up there.’’

Foster said a quality training camp on the Sunshine Coast, with plenty of contact work to ramp up the physicality factor, had ticked some key boxes, including a decompress of the lessons from the Boks tests.

‘‘We’ve got to make on-field decisions a little quicker than what we are,’’ he said. ‘‘We created some space, and options particularly off lineout time that were there ready to take, yet we seemed hesitant to call that.

‘‘That’s just the big occasion, and some new players against opposition for the first time, so there was a learning curve to that. The positive signs are we know we’re not far off and going into the northern tour we’re going to get met with a little bit of the unknown for many. This is a chance to keep learning the lessons so when we do get surprised on the park we can react a lot quicker than what we did.’’

The All Blacks coach was also not expecting the US side to be roadkill in the wake of their shock World Cup qualifying defeat to Uruguay, even though they would be missing some top players based offshore because the fixture fell out of the release window.

‘‘All the messages we’ve got are the chance to play in a big stadium at home, in a big fixture, in front of home fans is exciting them. So we are expecting whoever turns up to be a pretty competitive and committed group.’’

‘‘We’ve already flagged that for the likes of Sam Cane and Dane, who have been out for a while with injury, this will be an ideal game to get them back in there.’’ Ian Foster All Blacks coach

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2021-10-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

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