Loose forward Wallace Sititi has been ruled out of the upcoming three-test series against France with an ankle injury.<\/p>\n
Sititi, 22, was last year’s World Rugby’s Breakthrough Player of the Year but played a limited part in the Chiefs’ Super Rugby Pacific campaign this season as he recovered from a knee injury he suffered on the All Blacks’ 2024 end of year Northern Hemisphere tour.<\/p>\n
Coach Scott Robertson has called in Crusaders number eight Christian Lio-Willie as Sititi’s replacement.<\/p>\n
A statement from New Zealand Rugby said Sititi “was seen by a surgeon last night regarding a high ankle injury and it has been determined that he will require surgery…a further medical assessment will be made in three weeks to determine his likely return to play.”<\/p>\n
Lio-Willie was already with the squad as injury cover for Luke Jacobson.<\/p>\n
Blues loose forward Dalton Papali’I has now been called in to replace Lio-Willie as injury cover for Jacobson.<\/p>\n
The All Blacks kick off their test series against against France in Dunedin on 5 July.<\/p>\n
rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Loose forward Wallace Sititi has been ruled out of the upcoming three-test series against France with an ankle injury. Sititi, 22, was last year’s World Rugby’s Breakthrough Player of the Year but played a limited part in the Chiefs’ Super Rugby Pacific campaign this season as he recovered from a knee injury he suffered on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14084","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\/14084","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=14084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14086,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14084\/revisions\/14086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}