The Hurricanes have opened up about continued concussion symptoms Dane Coles has suffered through and admitted no one is clear when the initial head knock happened.
Coles has spent several weeks on the sidelines this season through injury, with the Hurricanes captain injuring knee ligaments during the Hurricanes win over the Highlanders on March 18. He later injured one of his calf muscles - which he's had a long history of tearing - during training one day.
Now Coles is suffering exercise-induced headaches which Hurricanes coach Chris Boyd revealed are as much impacting his return to play as his calf problem. To make matters worse, no one knows how or when the head trauma occurred.
"We genuinely don't know where he got those symptoms from, but those symptoms were not apparent to us until post his return-to-train from his knee injury. So he had no symptoms post that game, if in fact he incurred the injury in the game," Boyd said.
Head knocks without concussions regularly occur in rugby and headaches after or during exercise are often the first clue. In Coles' case, he was given two weeks of zero exercise because of his knee injury, meaning there was a delay before any symptoms became obvious.
Currently doing minimal training, the Hurricanes staff are finding it difficult to understand how far along his calf injury has recovered with Boyd telling the media they're unsure which of his ailments, his head or his calf, is primarily to blame for keeping him sidelined.
"It's a really interesting question and I asked that of the medical group this morning and I'm not a medical man but it's probably 50-50. We can't load his calf because he's getting headaches and in the end I'm not sure whether his concussion symptoms are going to go away first or whether his calf issue is going to go away first, but we can't test the calf until they do," Boyd said.
Coles joins fellow Hurricanes players, prop Reggie Goodes and centre Matt Proctor, who are currently unable to play due to concussion symptoms. While a fourth, lock James Broadhurst, retired last week as a result of ongoing concussion symptoms stretching from a concussion in 2015.
Unfortunately for Coles, the longer the symptoms stick around the longer it will take for him to return to match day fitness, and what must be most frustrating is the uncertainty around how the head injury happened.
"No [Coles has no idea]. We've had a look at the Highlanders game, which was the last game he played. There's no obvious point in time, he had no symptoms post that, so I'm not sure," Boyd said.
"I don't think there's any smoke and daggers there. I think at the end of the day he's started to return to train and developed some headaches."
Coles' injury would come as a blow to the All Blacks who are beginning to feel the injury strain with captain Kieran Read, Jerome Kaino and Ben Smith all under the injury cloud.