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Wales Online
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Jon Doel

Wales issue injury update on six players as Wayne Pivac finally gets some good news

Wales are hopeful key members of their 35-man squad will be fit and available for the game against New Zealand a week Saturday.

A host of front line players arrived in camp on Monday carrying injuries after their exploits at club level in the last fortnight.

Back three players Josh Adams (thumb), Alex Cuthbert (foot) and Leigh Halfpenny (hamstring) all turned up at the Vale Resort training base short of fitness.

Centre George North limped out of the Ospreys' defeat to the Dragons on Sunday with a "bang" on the knee, while Taulupe Faletau withdrew from Cardiff's game against the Stormers with a calf strain. Gareth Anscombe has been missing for the past few weeks with a rib injury.

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But Wales boss Wayne Pivac insisted the plan is for all of them to be ready for full training at the start of next week, though reinforcements may be needed to make up the numbers in training over the next few days.

“Taulupe Faletau, Leigh Halfpenny, Alex Cuthbert, Gareth Anscombe, George North and Josh Adams - those guys are all in rehab at the moment. They’re all improving," said Pivac.

“All of them, at this stage, are in consideration for the All Blacks, that’s the plan, and hopefully we’ll have them all up and running at the latest on Monday. They’re all in the same boat.

“They’re all progressing. Gareth will be up and running today and the others hopefully by the end of the week and ready for full training next week. That’s certainly what the medical team is working towards.

“It just means that this week we may have to bring in some extra players tomorrow to do our serious work and a double day. We’ll just have to work through that because the clubs are playing as well.”

Wales have, however, already lost one of their initial squad with Dewi Lake - who has been replaced by Bradley Roberts - being ruled out of the campaign after suffering a shoulder injury.

He will miss the entire series, though Pivac was hopeful he'd return in time for the Six Nations.

On Lake, Pivac said: “He’s out for the entire autumn series unfortunately because he’d done well in South Africa and we were looking to keep building on that. It’s really disappointing for him but he’s definitely been ruled out of this competition.

“He’s still a very young man with a massive future. He’s a pretty quick healer and I’m sure he’ll be back, chomping at the bit for the Six Nations. We had a little chat around it and, clearly, if you’re going to have an injury, now is the time instead of six months’ time.”

The number of injuries and sore bodies in the Wales camp this week mean that they will have to retain all the players they have available to them for training.

Therefore, it appears no players are going to be released back to their club side for this weekend's United Rugby Championship fixtures.

Pivac explained: “Given the names you’ve mentioned, and the names you haven’t mentioned who are training but are banged up from a game on a Sunday - we had 15 or 16 of our squad playing in that game and a lot of them are quite sore at the moment.

“At this stage, we don’t envisage any going back just purely because of where we’re at. I’ve spoken to three of the four coaches and I’ll speak to the fourth today as I only had the [medical] update 20 minutes ago.”

Read more:

Wales announce new captain as Justin Tipuric surprised by Pivac request

Women's World Cup marred by biting incident as player banned for three months

The very different Wales team to play All Blacks as troubling injury list grows

Wales call up replacement as Dewi Lake's autumn over before it started

Jiffy's 60th birthday message shows the lives he's changed after tragedy amid call for knighthood

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