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How the New Zealand sides are shaping up after a month of Super Rugby derbies
The first four rounds of Super Rugby have been thick with New Zealand conference derbies. Jamie Wall assesses how the five Kiwi teams are travelling.
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The last month has been a pretty torrid one for the New Zealand Super Rugby teams, with home derbies dominating the draw – some amazing, some not so much.
The upshot of all these bruising encounters is we now have a reasonable indication of who might dominate the New Zealand conference in 2017.
Chiefs: Right now the men from Waikato are the form team, with wins over the Highlanders, Blues and Hurricanes. All of those came about in contrasting circumstances, which shows that the Chiefs are capable of winning well, ugly or even in the most extreme of weather conditions. Tawera Kerr-Barlow is in career-best form, Aaron Cruden is showing his new employers in France what they can hopefully expect next season and Damian McKenzie’s pre-kick routine is as creepy and effective as ever. Right now about the only thing that could derail them is another scandal, although it’s doubtful any local strippers would be answering any phone calls from the Chiefs these days.
Crusaders: Another unbeaten team, though it’s likely that the Crusaders’ faithful have had enough of them leaving it to the absolute last minute in each game to preserve that record. Their game against the Highlanders will go down as one of the all-time greats, but what might be more impressive in the long run is the fact that they’ve blooded no less than 13 new players already this year. This seamless introduction has definitely been most notable at first five, where a potentially disastrous injury to Richie Mo’unga has been offset by the confidence of Mitchell Hunt. Even coach Scott Robertson is a rookie at this level, although if the Crusaders can keep winning we’ll get to see what he is an expert in lit af dance moves…
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Hurricanes: The reigning champs have scored almost twice as many points as any of the other New Zealand teams, but that’s mainly due to the cupcake schedule that saw them play the Sunwolves and Rebels first up. Then they got downed in torrential rain by the Chiefs, but bounced back to hammer the Highlanders in Wellington. Having two Barretts and two Saveas must seem criminally unfair to the rest of the teams, especially since Julian is looking like he’s interested in Super Rugby again and Jordie might just be as good as Beauden. Meanwhile, Ngani Laumape is continuing the depressing trend for NZ Warriors fans of watching former players achieve great success when they leave the club.
Highlanders: For an hour against the Crusaders, the Highlanders looked like the team that won Super Rugby in 2015. For the next 20, they looked like the one that lost their first eight games in a row in 2013. Unfortunately, this inconsistency got solved by playing like the most boring team in the world the next week against the Blues, and nothing they did seemed to work against the Hurricanes. The Highlanders are easily the team most affected by injuries; one bright spot though is coach Tony Brown’s valiant fashion sense – he deserves much credit for attempting to make the cheesecutter hat cool again for white guys.
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Blues: A serious disappointment, and that’s just the view of Hurricanes fans who just want Tana Umaga to turn out to be a good coach. After cruelly taunting their faithful with a big win over the Rebels in round one, the Blues reverted to back to type over the next three weeks. They lost heavily to the Chiefs, narrowly to the Highlanders, then became the Crusaders’ latest comeback victims. There are glimmers of hope, though: Gus Pulu’s form at halfback has been great, as has George Moala now that he’s starting, plus Sonny Bill Williams is still yet to return. Tana still needs to make his mind up on a couple of things, not least who is actually in charge – the Blues have had three different captains start a game in the first four weeks of play.
Comments on RugbyPass
Don’t pay a blind bit of notice to Lukie… he likes the sound of his own voice and is always looking for something controversial to say. He has been banging on about Leinster's defensive system all season like he knows something Jacques Nienebar doesn’t. Which is the reason why he didn’t apply for the job obviously
13 Go to commentsWho got the benefits out of Schmidt, Lowe, Aki, and Gibson Park?
13 Go to commentsWhat’s new its a common occurrence, just the journos out there expecting a negative spin. The outcome will be beneficial to jordie and Leinster. The home grown lads hav got some experience to step up to and be more competitive, that or spend the 6 months keeping the bench warm.
13 Go to commentsI’m all for speeding up the game. But can we be certain that the slowness of the game contributed to fans walking out? I’m not so sure. Super rugby largely suffered from most fans only being able to, really, follow the games played in their own time zone. So at least a third of the fan base wasn’t engaged at any point in time. As a Saffer following SA teams in the URC - I now watch virtually every European game played on the weekend. In SR, I wouldn’t be bothered to follow the games being played on the other side of the world, at weird hours, if my team wasn’t playing. I now follow the whole tournament and not just the games in my time zone. Second, with New Zealand teams always winning. It’s like formula one. When one team dominates, people lose interest. After COVID, with SA leaving and Australia dipping in form, SR became an even greater one horse race. Thats why I think Japan’s league needs to get in the mix. The international flavor of those teams could make for a great spectacle. But surely if we believe that shaving seconds off lost time events in rugby is going to draw fans back, we should be shown some figures that supports this idea before we draw any major conclusions. Where are the stats that shows these changes have made that sort of impact? We’ve measured down to the average no. Of seconds per game. Where the measurement of the impact on the fanbase? Does a rugby “fan” who lost interest because of ball in play time suddenly have a revived interest because we’ve saved or brought back into play a matter of seconds or a few minutes each game? I doubt it. I don’t thinks it’s even a noticeable difference to be impactful. The 20 min red card idea. Agreed. Let’s give it a go. But I think it’s fairer that the player sent off is substituted and plays no further part in the game as a consequence.
1 Go to commentsThose are pretty good draws for the two top Aussie teams. I certainly wouldn't want my Chiefs to have a quarter final in Brisbane. None of the top teams will want the Crusaders.
1 Go to commentsHonestly, I am a bit lost here …. Ireland - RSA was (at least in my opinion) perhaps (from a purely technical / rugby-skills-show point of view) the pinnacle of the RWC2023 - almost flawless playing (putting aside the kicking of RSA which was the difference between the two teams), rugby at it’s very best …. if I were a Bok and after the game some Irish lads came around saying “see you in 5 weeks same place”, I definitely wouldn’t have thought of it as being in any way “arrogant”, rather a sort of jolly “if we both continue to play like this, no one could stop us” - besides, few of us fans would have, at that time, been surprised to see the same teams playing on 23 september and 28 october 2023 ….. well, we all know Ireland chose to hit a slump to keep the QF curse alive …..
135 Go to commentsThere’s value gleaned from having an All Black star running and training with your team. How many games he starts (or even where he plays in the backline) will be decided on a week by week basis based on the needs for that week. But the overall learning and growth for all concerned, I’d think, is massively beneficial. Especially for Irish players.
13 Go to commentsSon, whith just " raw athlete “ , you are able to beat “ better rugby players “ by 74 points…. May be England should recruit in athletics….
1 Go to commentsPffft. It’s not a one-way street bud and Irish teams don’t seem to have had an issue taking kiwi players previously.
13 Go to commentsParticularly great to have captain Scott Barrett back after going off last week for the Crusaders. Codie Taylor a real leader and mighty Tamaiti Williams join Fletcher Newell in the front row. Those 2 will make a big difference. Great bench with the likes of Tom Christie, Jamie Hannah etc who are playing well. Should be a great derby.
1 Go to commentsDoes a blitz defence not have a weekness against a well-placed grubber kick, perhaps angled cleverly. All the defence is up and the full-back can only cover so much ground. Thoughts?
28 Go to commentsWhile Iose is destructive in the Canes set-up, he is not big for an international 8 and could struggle against the top teams. With his speed, he could be developed into a seven but, as Ben points out, he doesn’t show a scavenging game with the Canes or make dominating tackles. Sotutu has shown a step up this year and attitude plus motivation seems to be the big areas of growth. Deserves another AB shot imo.
3 Go to commentsNaholo is my only question mark for this side. He wasn’t the only one who had a forgettable game against the Brumbies but he was passive, defensively poor and generally lacked energy. Needs to get a whole lot busier for me. I would have liked to see Sullivan on that wing with Higgins on the bench (if staying with a 6-2 as BeegMike points out on here!)
3 Go to commentsWell, I am sure that Eben said exactly what he meant to say, exactly how he meant to say it. Does he strike you as a man that doesn't know arrogance when he sees it. He should know it because he has shaken the arrogance out of many foes before.
135 Go to commentsPls get it into your thick arrogant heads that the final was played by two Southern Hemisphere teams. The best against the best and that Argentina was just unlucky otherwise non of the Northetn Hemisphere teams would have seen the light of day.
135 Go to commentsAs long as New Zealand youth are involved in sport they are passionate for, and are well supported, it’s all good. I love league as well as rugby. NRL clubs have long since scouted the First 15 competitions, the NH and Japan scout super rugby and NPC. It’s a miracle there’s any players left for the all blacks to pick from.
5 Go to commentsI'm a Bok fan, so I don't say this lightly, but he is one of my all time favourite players. I am really going to miss watching him play. Thanks for many great memories. You are a true legend of the game.
3 Go to commentsBest way to deal with all of this is to play another game.
135 Go to commentsIt’s 12-15 games Luke. Ringrose has barely played in 2024 and Henshaw and Keenan have also been out for spells in the same time period. There are always injuries and for younger players to play with the likes of Barrett will be great for them. It’s just looking for negatives where there are none.
13 Go to commentsAndy Goode pushing his own agenda with very dubious considerations on refereeing performances. Luke Pearce speaking a bit of French doesn’t make him a good and adequate referee for the Champions Cup final; his latest refereeing performance in particular was not so great.
4 Go to comments