Brumbies lose Tomane

Tomane, who's availablity for Australia's three-Test series against England in June is now also in doubt, is the Brumbies' leading try-scorer, with six for the season, and has run in four tries in his last two games, including a hat-trick against the Waratahs in the Brumbies' first win at the Sydney Football Stadium since 2002.

The Wallaby's finishing will definitely be missed by the Brumbies, who are also without Henry Speight due to his Sevens commitments, while they also face the potential loss of captain Stephen Moore for Saturday's meeting with the Highlanders in Dunedin.

The skipper limped off with a calf problem just after halftime on Sunday and is struggling with bleeding in his calf.

"Tomane's been outstanding, if you look at his game on the weekend he was superb on attack and defensively," said head coach Stephen Larkham.

"He's been on fire this year and it's been his best season by a long way.

"Squeaky (Moore) has got a bit of swelling in his calf, he got a ruck mark and it bled down into his calf and he's a bit sore this morning. 

"We'll see how it goes this afternoon before we make a definitive call"

The blow will be softened by the fact that Larkham has several options to provide backup for Tomane, including James Dargaville and Nigel Ah Wong, who've been covering the position, and also Lausii Taliauli.

"There's three outside backs who haven't really had an opportunity to get on the field," said Larkham.

"They've all been pushing for a spot and we're strictly looking at their performances this afternoon to make a decision on either Nigel or Dargaville."

Lock Sam Carter refelected on their dismal performance against the Crusaders at home last week and lamented the multiplle errors they made at crucial times and the turnovers they conceded, which Todd Blackadder's charges capitalised on, acknowledging that they will have to step up if they want to avoid loss to a third New Zealand side this season after falling short against the Chiefs in Round Six and the Crusaders last week.

"We were very dissapointed with how we played on sunday and it's going to be a very tough trip to New Zealand this week, but we're confident and we're going to train hard this week.

"It's going to be tough but if we train well this week and stick to what we want to do then and don't make so may errors then hopefully we can get a good result."

When asked how tough it'd be to turn last week's errors around, Carter responded: "It's not too hard it's just simple errors, we just need to tighten up our skills.

"We trained really well last week and we just weren't good enough on the day."

Larkham also said that they'll put in the hard work this week to compete with the defending champions' strong, physical forward game.

"They're probably a bit more structured than most of the New Zealand sides, they're a very physical outfit and we'll address that today," he explained.

"They kick the ball a lot and they've got really good kick chasers,(Patrick) Osbourne and Ben Smith in particular, and Aaron Smith is a good controller around the ruck.

"It's a similar proposition every week, every New Zealand side that you come up against is chock full of All Blacks and it's no different this week.

"They bring a hard edge to the game and we'll try and match it this week."