LONG READ ‘If we can bottle the last three weeks for the rest of the season, Super Rugby will be in a great place’

Here’s a thing to highlight how ‘anybody can beat anybody’ and how tight Super Rugby Pacific really is this season.

In the five seasons of the competition, this is the first year in which every team has recorded at least one win by Round 3. In previous years, there have always been at least two winless teams by the end of the third weekend, but this year, there’s none.

Furthermore, only three teams have more than one win. And though eight teams are already in double-digits for tries scored, only four teams have positive for-and-against records.

In Round 1, Moana Pasifika ran in six tries against the Fijian Drua at their Churchill Park, Lautoka fortress. In Round 2, the Hurricanes put 50 on Moana in Wellington. Then in Round 3, and back at Churchill Park, the Drua held out the Hurricanes in monsoon conditions to complete the ledger of everyone cancelling each other out.

It has been a fantastic start to the rugby year, and the number of potential blockbusters coming just grows by the round. Three out of five correct picks this weekend just gone would have won a lot more tipping comps than it lost.

From an Australian perspective, a clean sweep of wins is certainly something to celebrate, simply for how rare they are. Round 3 is far too early for judgements about closing gaps to the New Zealand teams (not that that will stop them being made), but three Australian wins and all 11 teams now recording wins certainly speaks to a closer start to the competition than we’ve ever seen.

If we can bottle the last three weeks and sip on it for the rest of the season, Super Rugby will be in a great place.

Force start tricky NZ tour in best possible way

I know I wasn’t alone last week in suggesting the Western Force had to drastically find a result against Moana Pasifika in Round 3, simply for the fact that the Highlanders and Hurricanes to follow were only going to make things more difficult for each week without a win.

A loss to the nominally easiest of the NZ teams first up could easily have led to a pretty tough three weeks on tour in Aotearoa, and anyone still looking for their first win in Round 6 is playing catch-up rugby for the rest of the year. A win over Moana in Pukekohe was, therefore, very much season-defining for the Force.

After two losses through the first fortnight, the Western Force have now proved they can play a lot better than they had been.

The Force did win, and won quite well in the end, having the game in hand comfortably before they allowed Moana to slip through for two late bonus point-cancelling tries in the last five minutes.

Importantly, after allowing themselves to be ground down by the physical Blues the week before, the Force maintained a healthy broken-play and set-piece game to wear Moana down in much the same fashion. Their pick-and-drive and maul attack from close quarters allowed them to play the high-possession game they’re favouring in 2026, while simultaneously forcing the home side into long periods of defence that dented their ability to convert turnover ball.

Coming into the game, the Force were ranked 11^th of 11 teams for kicking out of hand, and this was one of their major attacking adjustments made on arrival in NZ. They kicked out of hand 30 times during the match, representing a more than 50% increase on their average over the first two games. Clearly, they recognised the need to play the game down Moana’s end of the field, and were able to do that, regaining roughly one in every five kicks they launched.

They have the opportunity to back up this performance now with a trip down to Dunedin to face a Highlanders side dented by the Chiefs in Round 2 and put away by Queensland in Brisbane on Friday, and it’s an opportunity the Force really need to take.

After two losses through the first fortnight, the Western Force have now proved they can play a lot better than they had been. Now they need to build on the confidence gained in South Auckland and show this was no one-off performance like we’ve seen from them too often.

Reds register ‘imperfect’ bonus point win

Following their 31-14 win over the Highlanders in Brisbane, I pondered whether the Reds would be completely satisfied with their performance.

My conclusion was that despite the five-tries-to-two, bonus-point win, they wouldn’t be overly thrilled with how they got there. Which is not to say they were terrible and lucky to win; not at all. They finished the better of several entries on the stats sheet: defenders beaten and clean breaks among them, as their strong carrying game allowed them to make plenty of ground through the middle of the Highlanders defence.

Salakaia-Loto pulled off some thunderous hits in defence to not just stop Highlanders in their tracks, but question their decision to take up rugby in the first place.

Les Kiss post-match was particularly keen to keen to praise his tight five and midfield for this, singling out lock Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, who might have played one of, if not his best, game in a Queensland jersey. The big No.5 was a dominant carrier all game and pulled off some thunderous hits in defence to not just stop Highlanders in their tracks, but question their decision to take up rugby in the first place. He was hitting that hard. Ask tighthead prop Rohan Wingham.

But interlaced with his abundant praise, Kiss also used phrases like “it wasn’t perfect” and it “wasn’t complete”.

Certainly, their five lost lineouts will be a source of frustration, as will the amount of possession turned over, with six of their eight penalties conceded in their own half. All of it collectively gave the Highlanders opportunities that Jamie Joseph would lament an inability to capitalise on, and it’s something they’ve now got just days to tidy up before landing in Canberra to face the competition-leading ACT Brumbies.

But they were certainly better than their opening-night showing against the NSW Waratahs, and the bye in Round 2 evidently worked in their favour. Skipper Fraser McReight mentioned “some hard truths” following the loss to the Tahs, and there’s also no doubt the Reds were buoyed by the return of Harry Wilson and a welcome debut from fly-half Carter Gordon, who admitted himself he was a long way from perfect.

But at least the Reds have a win on the board now, and there’s certainly something to be said for far-from-perfect bonus point wins.

Three Brumbies wins, three different routes to victory

Against the Force in Round 1, the Brumbies had to overcome minimal first-half possession before building into the game and eventually pulling away in the second half. Against the Crusaders in Round 2, they enjoyed long periods of first-half possession but let themselves down with too many turnovers and overplaying when unable to breach some impressive line defence. And then they built into the game and pulled away sharply in the second half.

Against the Blues in Canberra on Saturday, the Brumbies were forced into an attritional, physical contest up the middle, complemented with an aerial battle on the edges that in the first half at least, they were not coping with well at all.

After the home side scored first and threatened to get away in the first 25 minutes, the Blues hit back late in the half to draw level and head to the break with a 15-15 scoreline that definitely reflected the tightness on display.

The Brumbies scored first in the second half, but the Blues again came back and were leading into the last 10 minutes, before the yellow card for fly-half Stephen Perofeta proved a turning point.

But even then, with just about the perfect opposition player to be removed from the contest sitting down, the Brumbies spent much of the closing stretch in their own half. It was only a bit of Blues breakdown dunderheadedness that gave up the penalty the Brumbies used to get down the other end of the field, still taking another three or four minutes before Charlie Cale was able to sneak down low enough to score under the noses of the Blues’ line defence.

“A nailbiter,” was how Stephen Larkham described the after-the-siren resolve to find the win, and he was quick to credit his bench for getting the team home and maintaining their unbeaten start to the season.

Where in the opening two rounds the last stages of their games were all about earning and keeping a bonus point, against the Blues the Brumbies had to find a gear they’d not really had to use yet. That they could do that with a relatively young group out on the field at the end of the game – upwards of 10 of them had fewer than 35 games to their name, plus fly-half Tane Edmed was in just his third game for the Brumbies – augers well for their decision-making when some more experienced names return.

Brumbies-Reds matches have had a little something extra about them for most of the last decade, and Saturday looms as yet another mouthwatering contest.

This has to be the most impressive part of the Brumbies’ start to the season. Len Ikitau, Tom Hooper and Noah Lolesio have all departed. Allan Ala’alatoa, Tom Wright, Lachie Lonergan and Nick Frost are all yet to suit up in 2026. James Slipper and Cadeyrn Neville had been replaced by that stage in the game.

Those names represent more than 900 games of experience not out there on the field working out how and where to find the chink in the Blues’ defence after the siren. It again speaks for the quality of the Brumbies’ development of young players in their program.

Which now brings us to Round 4, and maybe the biggest Australian game of the year already.

Brumbies-Reds matches have had a little something extra about them for most of the last decade, and Saturday night looms as yet another mouthwatering contest.