Dunning and Kepu turfed out of 2009
December 04 2008
The turf at Wembley Stadium came in for fresh criticism on Wednesday from Australia captain George Smith after the Wallabies finished their European tour with an 18-11 win over the Barbarians.
But Australia's victory was marred by the sight of props Matt Dunning, who exited on a stretcher with a snapped Achilles tendon, and Sekope Kepu (torn pectoral muscle) both going off early in the second-half soon after a Wallaby scrum subsided.
Both players are likely to miss the entire 2009 Super 14 season after being victims of Wembley's loose turf, which seemed to give way all too easily under the combined weight of the two teams' forward packs.
"It was obvious that that surface wasn't conducive to scrums," said Wallabies captain George Smith.
"That's why we went to uncontested scrums."
Dunning, whose injury may even be career-threatening, and Kepu were both hurt in the same scrum early in the second half, with Dunning's slip bringing the entire scrum down and resulting in Kepu's arm ripping back, tearing his chest muscle.
At some points parts of the ground looked almost as bad as they did when the 'old' Wembley staged the 1970 soccer FA Cup final just a matter days after the Horse of the Year show. Huge divots were left all across the pitch on Wednesday at points of contact.
"Both of these are significant injuries. To have it happen in the last outing is not great, but they are resilient characters," said Australia coach Robbie Deans.
New South Wales Waratahs coach Chris Hickey, whose propping stocks are now considerably thinner, said while losing so much quality to injury was a blow, he was confident in his team's ability to fill the gaps.
"It's always disappointing to see those sort of injuries, particularly in the last game of the tour," he said.
"The experience we've lost you can't buy unfortunately but we've also got plenty of good young players who we're confident of their ability to step up."
Hickey identified young props Dan Palmer and Jeremy Tilse as the men most likely to fill Dunning and Kepu's boots.
In November last year, players from both England and Croatia's soccer teams criticised the state of the Wembley pitch ahead of a match the Croats won to end England's hopes of qualifying for Euro 2008.
Just weeks earlier at Wembley, redeveloped at a cost of some £800m pounds ($1.25bn), an NFL American football match between the New York Giants and the Miami Dolphins caused huge damage to the pitch.