Injuries impact Super Rugby; Reds ride a wave of form

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Injuries impact Super Rugby; Reds ride a wave of form

2025-03-16 08:50 Last Updated At：09:11

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The Super Rugby season is only five rounds old. Yet, with less than a third of the regular season over injuries are already becoming a major factor.

Prior to the weekend’s fifth round, 67 players across the 11 teams were unavailable because of injuries.

The injury toll is particularly high among the five New Zealand teams which had 40 players out of action.

The Blues, who lost 32-31 to the Chiefs on Saturday after missing a late conversion, are particularly hard-hit with 11 players on the injured list. That includes All Blacks Beauden Barrett, Hoskins Sotutu and Sam Darry.

The Chiefs had eight players out of action this round, including All Blacks Wallace Sititi and Josh Lord but were fortunate to have flyhalf Damien McKenzie back from injury. His performance was influential.

The Queensland Reds had eight players out while Hurricanes, Waratahs and Western Force were without seven players. The Fijian Drua are the only team that reported no injuries before the round.

Fans’ occasional bafflement at the implementation of rules around head contact was evident in two incidents in Friday’s match between the Highlanders and Hurricanes.

In the first, Hurricanes midfielder Ngatungane Punivai was knocked unconscious attempting to tackle Highlanders winger Timoci Tavatavanawai. As Punivai was led dazed from the field he was also surprised to learn he had been yellow-carded.

The referee was apologetic and technically correct. Punivai hadn’t altered his body position sufficiently in the tackle to mitigate the possibility of head contact.

While Tavatavanawai had also driven his shoulder into Punivai’s face the responsibility to avoid head contact lies with the tackler.

In the second, Hurricanes midfielder Peter Umaga-Jensen made a high tackle on Highlanders wing Caleb Tangitau in the last moments of the game as the Highlanders tried to turn around a 20-18 deficit. A penalty might have changed the outcome.

But the referee didn’t see it and the TMO was unable to bring it to his attention because, he deemed, it didn’t reach the yellow card threshold.

Winger Macca Springer produced the outstanding individual performance of the fifth round when he scored five tries in the Crusaders’ 55-33 win over the Western Force.

The 21-year old equaled Super Rugby’s single-match try-scoring record set in 2021 by the late Chiefs winger Sean Wainui.

Springer hasn’t been a regular starter for the Crusaders but was given his chance on the left wing Saturday by head coach Rob Penney who said he had been energetic in training.

His fourth try came when he kicked ahead, recovered his own kick and eluded a defender to score. The fifth saw him trapped in a tight pocket near the left touchline. He managed to step infield and drive through tackles to score.

“The last one, I had to have a little bit of a laugh at myself,” Springer said. “I looked at (fellow winger Sevu Reece) and he was laughing at me. It was more a surreal laugh. It wasn’t a laughing matter but I just couldn’t believe it myself.”

The Queensland Reds became the top Australian team when they moved into third place with a 35-15 win over traditional rivals the New South Wales Waratahs.

The Waratahs had been confident ahead of the match after winning home games against the Highlanders, the Fijian Drua and the Force. They also started well against the Reds, scoring the first try of the match through winger Triston Reilly.

The match turned when Waratahs fullback Andrew Kellaway received a yellow card for a dangerous tackle on Harry Wilson. Reds fullback Heremaia Murray took advantage of Kellaway’s absence to score a chip-and-chase try.

The derby match was typically physical and the Reds gradually gained the edge with tries to Wilson, then Richie Asiata who scored from a rolling maul. Fraser McReight dummied Kellaway to score early in the second half and lock Angus Blyth scored to put the game beyond doubt.

“I thought it was a cracker of a match,” Reds head coach Les Kiss said. “They came at us early, scored early and we had to hold the fort.

“We weren’t very tidy early, they were on top of us but we kept hanging in there. I thought it was a cracker.”

AP rugby: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby

Trump administration deports hundreds of immigrants even as a judge orders their removals be stopped

2025-03-17 06:35 Last Updated At：06:40

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday temporarily blocking the deportations, but lawyers told him there were already two planes with immigrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a statement Sunday, responded to speculation about whether the administration was flouting court orders: “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been reoved from U.S. territory.”

The acronym refers to the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump targeted in his unusual proclamation that was released Saturday

In a court filing Sunday, the Department of Justice, which has appealed Boasberg's decision, said it would not use the Trump proclamation he blocked for further deportations if his decision is not overturned.

Trump's allies were gleeful over the results.

“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house about 300 immigrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house immigrants, posted on the site: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Boasberg's verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final order but that the Trump administration clearly violated the “spirit” of it.

“This just incentivizes future courts to be hyper specific in their orders and not give the government any wiggle room,” Vladeck said.

The immigrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law, invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.

Venezuela’s government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”

Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone during the past decade. Trump seized on the gang during his campaign to paint misleading pictures of communities that he contended were “taken over” by what were actually a handful of lawbreakers.

The Trump administration has not identified the immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. It also sent two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to El Salvador who had been arrested in the United States.

Video released by El Salvador’s government Sunday showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend down at the waist.

The video also showed the men being transported to prison in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.

The immigrants were taken to the notorious CECOT facility, the centerpiece of Bukele's push to pacify his once violence-wracked country through tough police measures and limits on basic rights

The Trump administration said the president actually signed the proclamation contending Tren de Aragua was invading the United States on Friday night but didn't announce it until Saturday afternoon. Immigration lawyers said that, late Friday, they noticed Venezuelans who otherwise couldn't be deported under immigration law being moved to Texas for deportation flights. They began to file lawsuits to halt the transfers.

“Basically any Venezuelan citizen in the US may be removed on pretext of belonging to Tren de Aragua, with no chance at defense,” Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights group, warned on X.

The litigation that led to the hold on deportations was filed on behalf of five Venezuelans held in Texas who lawyers said were concerned they'd be falsely accused of being members of the gang. Once the act is invoked, they warned, Trump could simply declare anyone a Tren de Aragua member and remove them from the country.

Boasberg barred those Venezuelans' deportations Saturday morning when the suit was filed, but only broadened it to all people in federal custody who could be targeted by the act after his afternoon hearing. He noted that the law has never before been used outside of a congressionally declared war and that plaintiffs may successfully argue Trump exceeded his legal authority in invoking it.

The bar on deportations stands for up to 14 days and the immigrants will remain in federal custody during that time. Boasberg has scheduled a hearing Friday to hear additional arguments in the case.

He said he had to act because the immigrants whose deportations may actually violate the U.S. Constitution deserved a chance to have their pleas heard in court.

“Once they’re out of the country," Boasberg said, "there’s little I could do."

Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela.