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Crusaders head coach Rob Penney has revealed the extent of the injury that kept All Blacks hooker George Bell out of the Super Rugby Pacific season opener on Friday night.
It’s bad news for Crusaders fans, the 23-year-old will miss the entire 2025 Super Rugby season with a fracture in his foot.
Penney confirmed the injury, which was sustained during the Crusaders’ second preseason contest, following his side’s victory over the Hurricanes on Friday night.
“He’s had a little fracture in a little bone…which is a very challenging place for a front-rower to have a problem,” Penney told media at the post-match press conference.
“He’s a four-month return to play. He’s philosophical, devastated at the start, but Belly is a champion bloke. He is young…it will extend his career by a couple of years, so someone will be a winner out of it.”
With fellow All Blacks hooker Codie Taylor also sidelined for 2-3 weeks with a hamstring complaint, the Crusaders turned to 24-year-old Ioane Moananu in the N0. 2 jersey and handed a debut to 2024 New Zealand U20 representative Manumaua Letiu off the bench.
Both players stepped up to the plate in the win, with the Crusaders ending the contest with a 93 per cent lineout success rate and a faultless 100 per cent scrum success rate.
“We’re going to need him [Ioane] a lot with Belly gone, and young Moa, who we are going to try and nurse through in behind Codie,” Penney said of his young hookers.
The team also lost young All Black Noah Hotham to a suspected ankle sprain after just eight minutes, making way for a sparkling Kyle Preston debut.
Hotham was almost joined on the sidelines by fellow All Black Ethan Blackadder, but the loose forward simply had his dislocated finger popped back into place and carried on. Penney had no further updates to give on Blackadder’s status.
“Hard to know. He said he’s fine. Red [Richard] Conway, wasn’t, who chopped his finger off so he could be an All Black. (Ethan) just played on through.
“Ethan is that sort of character. We won’t compromise him in any way if it’s going to effect him…he’s really trying to re-establish that he can go hard and go long and that’s the start of it for him today.”
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