The Blues have suffered a huge blow heading into the Super Rugby Pacific semi-finals with talisman skipper Patrick Tuipulotu ruled out for the rest of their campaign.<\/p>\n
Tuipulotu limped off 20 minutes into the Blues’ quarter-final against the Fijian Drua on Saturday night. Dalton Papali’i stepped up to the captaincy role as\u00a0the side beat the Drua 36-5<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Blues confirmed on Sunday that Tuipulotu had torn the medial ligament in his right knee.<\/p>\n He is likely to be out of rugby for six to seven weeks, so will not only miss the\u00a0Blues’ semi-final against the Brumbies in Auckland on Friday<\/a>\u00a0and potentially the final, but will also not figure in All Blacks coach Scott Robertson’s plans for the tests against England in July.<\/p>\n Tuipulotu had been in imposing form for the Blues this season and Papali’i hailed him after the Drua match as an exceptional leader.<\/p>\n Papali’i is likely to replace him as skipper and said on Saturday night he was ”comfortable” about taking over if Tuipulotu was ruled out.<\/p>\n The Blues will be hoping to have Sam Darry and Laghlan McWhannell back to boost their locking stocks for the Brumbies semi-final after they missed the quarter-final because of concussion protocols.<\/p>\n The Brumbies beat the Highlanders 32-16 on Saturday night and are the only Australian team left in the competition after\u00a0the Chiefs eliminated the Reds on Friday night<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the Hurricanes beat the Melbourne Rebels on Saturday<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Blues beat the Brumbies 46-7 in April.<\/p>\n The Hurricanes will have home advantage over the Chiefs in the other semi-final on Saturday.<\/p>\n rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Blues have suffered a huge blow heading into the Super Rugby Pacific semi-finals with talisman skipper Patrick Tuipulotu ruled out for the rest of their campaign. Tuipulotu limped off 20 minutes into the Blues’ quarter-final against the Fijian Drua on Saturday night. Dalton Papali’i stepped up to the captaincy role as\u00a0the side beat the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10194,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10192\/revisions\/10194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}