Highlanders’ All Black Fabian Holland dislocated his shoulder in a pre-season game against Moana Pasifika in Queenstown at the weekend and will miss the start of the Super Rugby Pacific season.<\/p>\n
How long the 23-year-old lock, World Rugby\u2019s breakout player last year, spends on the sidelines remains to be seen. <\/p>\n
In an update yesterday, assistant coach Ben Smith said the joint was popped back in shortly after the incident \u2013 caused when Holland was cleaned out at a ruck during his team’s victory \u2013 and that X-Rays had not revealed any fractures.<\/p>\n
Holland was outstanding for the All Blacks last year after making his Test debut in Dunedin against France, quickly proving himself to be a hard-working and resilient player alongside skipper Scott Barrett. <\/p>\n
It is another blow to a franchise still reeling from the season-ending knee injury to highly promising halfback Dylan Pledger, a 20-year-old yet to play Super Rugby who was almost certain to make an extended All Blacks squad this year had he remained fit.<\/p>\n
Pledger ruptured an ACL<\/a> during training with the Highlanders last month and will be out for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n Holland\u2019s injury comes as Blues and All Blacks lock Patrick Tuipulotu <\/a>recovers from a shoulder injury of his own. <\/p>\n Tuipulotu, named in the All Blacks\u2019 end-of-year tour squad and then withdrawn due to his latest injury, which required for surgery, is due to return to the game in mid-April.<\/p>\n Barrett is on a non-playing sabbatical which rule keep him out of the Crusaders (and presumably harm\u2019s way) for most of the season ahead of the inaugural Nations Championship<\/a> in July which features Tests at home against France, Italy and Ireland, and a demanding tour of South Africa in August and September. <\/p>\n Chiefs pair Tupou Vaa\u2019i and Josh Lord, and Blues lock Sam Darry are the other second-rowers in the All Blacks frame.<\/p>\n The Highlanders, whose head coach Jamie Joseph\u2019s future remains in question<\/a> due to his presumed application for the All Blacks job vacated by Scott Robertson<\/a>, kick off their season by hosting the reigning champion Crusaders in Dunedin on Friday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Highlanders’ All Black Fabian Holland dislocated his shoulder in a pre-season game against Moana Pasifika in Queenstown at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[789,52362,111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-276449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-all-blacks","9":"tag-highlanders","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}