Three prominent All Blacks set to miss third Bledisloe Test

The birth of children looks set to keep three prominent All Blacks out of the team to take on the Wallabies in the third Bledisloe Cup Test in Australia. 

Sam Whitelock, Aaron Smith and Richie Mo’unga are all expecting the arrival of new babies imminently and have thus chosen to make themselves unavailable in order to be present at the respective births. 

The All Black leadership group will take quite a knock as both Whitelock and Smith have recently been chosen as captains in the absence of Sam Cane. 

All Black Head Coach Ian Foster said: 

"I'll have to confirm everything but it's unlikely Sammy Whitelock for example and Aaron Smith potentially will be on the plane on Thursday. 

"We'll confirm more of those details as I have them. 

"We've got some family situations around babies that we're trying to juggle and what that means now, particularly with not coming on the plane on Thursday but also when we get to Queensland they've got a hard quarantine for two weeks which is a player alone in his room so that's going to delay some entry for some players. 

"We're juggling a little bit but we'll probably release the group that's going on the plane later tomorrow. 

"Once we know how long the Queensland quarantine situation is going to be for bringing replacement players over that might determine when we might bring some extra players over.”