All Blacks' prop woes worsens
Prop Joe Moody suffered a dislocated shoulder in his team's 39-22 win over Argentina in New Plymouth on Saturday.
All Black coach Steve Hansen confirmed Moody had gone to hospital for a scan.
"It looks like he will have to undergo surgery," Hansen told a post-match media briefing, adding: "It will be the end of him for the year."
The Moody injury follows after fellow prop Owen Franks has been ruled out for the rest of the year with Achilles problems.
Hansen said the man of the match, flank Vaea Fifita, who made his starting debut and marked it with one of the great individual All Blacks tries, had to keep working on his game in order to reach his potential but the game was a starting point and he had shown a little bit of his potential in the game.
Having him on the left flank had been pre-planned, he said, but he added it hadn't been intended that he would run as far as he did to score his try.
It was only Fifita's second Test and Hansen said afterwards he can only get better.
"I dont think he's the finished product. He's got a long way to go. But it's a tank that's got plenty in it and our job now is to bring that out and his job is to work on his game and get better and better and reach his potential."
He said in the breakdown contest New Zealand had gone to ground too soon and then didn't get the right people in to clean out.
There was some dispute over interpretations of whether the ball was out or not but referee Angus Gardiner had called that they were out.
"We have to adjust and adapt to the referee and we didn't do that," he said.
Hansen said he had been happy enough with the way the back three had coped with the high ball sent their way, especially by Argentina's flyhalf Nicolas Sanchez. But he added that when the ball was wet like it was, with rain at some stages during the game, the odd one was sometimes going to be missed.
Los Pumas coach Daniel Hourcade rated it his side's best performance of the year after back-to-back losses against South Africa.
But they lost their way when they had a one-man advantage with All Blacks fly-half Beauden Barrett in the sin-bin.
"It was really a tough game and perhaps our best, but the All Blacks showed the best of what they have when they have a player in the sin bin, they played really well."
