New Zealand captain Scott Barrett is set to miss the inaugural Nations Championship tests and tour of South Africa (SA) while \u200bsidelined for up to five months to recover from \u200cback surgery.<\/p>\n
His Super Rugby team, Canterbury Crusaders, confirmed the 32-year-old lock would go under the knife by the end of the week after non-invasive treatments \u200bhad failed.<\/p>\n
The All Blacks kick off their season against France \u200bon July 4 before hosting Italy and Ireland in \u2060the Nations Championship.<\/p>\n
They head to SA in August for a \u200bfour-test tour against the world champions.<\/p>\n
Barrett started the season on a \u200bnon-playing sabbatical and had surgery on a troublesome ankle and Achilles problem. His plan to return to action for defending champions Crusaders in late April \u200bwas put on ice due to the back struggles.<\/p>\n
Crusaders coach Rob \u200bPenney said Barrett was frustrated by it all.<\/p>\n
“But he\u2019s got his head around \u200cit \u2060now, a pretty special trip to SA that he\u2019s going to miss, and some other bits and pieces,” Penney told New Zealand media on Wednesday.
\n“But, ultimately, he\u2019s just got to get himself \u200bright.”<\/p>\n
Loose forward and \u200boccasional skipper \u2060Ardie Savea is the standout candidate to take the All Blacks captaincy under new coach Dave Rennie.<\/p>\n
Barrett’s \u200bCrusaders and All Blacks teammate Will Jordan may \u200balso miss \u2060the start of the test season having been ruled out of the rest of the Super Rugby campaign with a calf problem.<\/p>\n
The Crusaders \u2060host \u200bleaders Wellington Hurricanes in Christchurch on \u200bFriday seeking a victory to give them a chance of hosting their first match in \u200bthe playoffs.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14928,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-35576","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"They head to SA in August for a \u200bfour-test tour against the world champions.","published_date":"","news_description":"They head to SA in August for a \u200bfour-test tour against the world champions.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35583,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35576\/revisions\/35583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=35576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}