LONG READ Key questions for four Australian teams on final stretch of Super Rugby Pacific

Suddenly, there are just three rounds of Super Rugby Pacific left to play before the Finals Series. A competition that felt like it only hit the mid-point a week ago is now very much in sight of the finish line.

And significantly, an uneven run home for the 11 teams. With one final ‘bulk bye’ round to come in next week’s penultimate round, six teams have three games to play, while five only have two.

Unsurprisingly, key games have emerged on that run home for most teams.

And with three rounds left to play, it is only the Fijian Drua we can officially put the line through for season 2025. The Drua are one of those teams with just two games to play, and the maximum points available for them is less than the sixth-placed Hurricanes’ current tally.

All other teams remain in contention for the play-offs, be that genuinely or mathematically. And as we all know, once you’re relying on maths and hypotheticals to get your team home, your best chance of qualifying is almost certainly a thing of the past.

Two Australian teams – the ACT Brumbies and Queensland Reds – are comfortable in the top four and playing desperately for a top-two finish and all the home ground benefits that come with it.

The other two teams – the Western Force and NSW Waratahs – are just desperate to find a way back into the top six.

For the Reds and Waratahs, an extra game in hand will make their equations a touch easier. But regardless of how many games each team has left, and the equations they will face over the next three weeks, there is a key question each team needs to address to push their season into June.

ACT Brumbies: 39 points – 2^nd place, 8 wins. To come: Reds (H), Bye, Crusaders (H)

Can their defensive improvements hold?

Defence has been a key and consistent focus of the Brumbies this year, but with questionable success.

In 2024, they conceded 311 points and just 41 tries in their 14 regular-season games, conceding an average of 2.9 tries and 22.2 points per game, the third-best defensive record in the competition.

That felt about right; they finished third in the table and won their home quarter-final, but couldn’t win an away semi-final for the third straight year – all in New Zealand.

In 2025, the worry is they have already conceded 314 points and 44 tries, in two fewer games played. This year the average is 3.7 tries and 26 points conceded per game – almost one full try a game worse than last season.

The silver lining is that since their Round 8 bye, there has been a marked improvement in the Brumbies’ defence. Over their first seven games, they averaged 31.7 points and 4.3 tries against per game, whereas since then, that’s right down to 18.4 points and 2.8 tries per game.

Slicing the concessions almost in half would please coach Stephen Larkham, though you only have to go back to the Round 11 loss to the Hurricanes in Canberra to find Larkham lamenting too many missed tackles, especially after they had kept Moana Pasifika scoreless the week prior.

So it is imperative they maintain that recent uptick in defensive solidity in the coming weeks against fourth-placed Queensland and the third-placed Crusaders, who have scored an average of 4.5 and 5.2 tries per game respectively.

The work-rate of centre Len Ikitau and hybrid lock-back-row Tom Hooper are hugely important in maintaining the Brumbies alignment and midfield connection in defence, which in turn allows the likes of Ryan Lonergan and Corey Toole to get up quickly on the outside and into the eyelines of opposition playmakers, forcing them to play narrower where the concentrated defence is.

The Brumbies have switched to this not-quite-blitz, kind-of-rush defence properly this season after using it in patches last year, but the next few weeks could be the making or breaking of their system.

Queensland Reds: 32 points – 4^th place, 7 wins. To come: Brumbies (A), Hurricanes (H), Drua (H)

Can they find their missing go-forward?

At the start of this season, I expected Queensland to be the best Australian team, and though it was mid-season before the Brumbies overtook them in the table, my feeling was we hadn’t seen the best of the Reds.

I’m still not sure we have seen the Reds’ best; the performance that properly illustrates what a squad like they assembled over the off-season is capable of. They’re getting there, but they’re not there yet.

Losing Harry Wilson and Filipo Daugunu mid-season drained a lot of their go-forward, while a mis-firing lineout has belied their possession of the dominant maul in Super Rugby.

Further, while statisticians Opta rank the Reds behind only the Blues for gainline success this season (and third of all professional clubs around the world), they have the second-worst percentage of dominant carries among the 11 Super Rugby Pacific teams. While they lead the competition in terms of offloads leading to tries or line breaks, their overall offload success rate is surprisingly low.

So their gainline success is not really from dominant carrying, and it’s not really from offloading either. They also play much narrower than other teams this season, throwing the lowest number of long passes, and have one of the lowest passes per game average in the competition.

The vast majority of those passes are short to mid-length, getting past the second receiver only 7.5% of the time, the second lowest in Super Rugby.

Daugunu is the leading try-scorer of their outside backs with six, but with Lachie Anderson, Josh Flook, Heremaia Murray, Tim Ryan and Jock Campbell totalling only 10 more between them.

For contrast, Brumbies wingers Corey Toole and Andy Muirhead have nine and seven tries respectively, and full-back Tom Wright – almost comically yet to cross the stripe in 2025 after 10 tries last year – averages one try-assist per game. Only the Fijian Drua have played wider more often than the Brumbies this season.

Bundle that all in with the worst-performing lineout in the competition that throws to the middle half the time – more than any other team, and mostly to Josh Canham, who wins more lineouts per 80 minutes than anyone – and you understand why there is a feeling the Reds are relatively containable.

So, the question of go-forward remains, but there might be green shoots of improvement. Queensland won all 12 of their own lineouts on Friday in Sydney, and scored two of their four tries from their damaging maul, which has been a reliable ground-making resource all season.

If they can start supplying more lineout ball to service that, their go-forward might not be a concern for much longer.

New South Wales Waratahs: 22 points – 8^th place, 5 wins. To come: Crusaders (H), Force (A), Blues (A)

Is it actually already over?

The good news for the Waratahs is that they have three games remaining, and can get to a maximum of 37 points, which is the Crusaders’ current tally in third. There are plenty of points available to them.

The bad news? They play those Crusaders in Sydney on Friday, before trips to Perth and Auckland. Two of those teams are in the top five, and the Force will be eyeing the ‘Tahs as their last of two winnable games to finish.

Coaches often use byes for some degree of reset, but the worry for Dan McKellar and NSW is that coming off the bye, they conceded 40 points to the Brumbies and 28 points to the Reds.

And worse, both losses featured second half fade-outs. In the loss to Queensland in Sydney last week, they gave up a lead before ultimately giving over the game as well.

Sadly, the Waratahs have struggled to find a comfortable rhythm this season, with injuries and changes a constant. ‘Continuity with change’ about sums up their year, to borrow from the great Julia Louis-Dreyfus political satire, Veep.

I look forward to being wrong about this, but I’m not sure the Waratahs will win again this season.

Western Force: 22 points – 9^th place, 4 wins. To come: Drua (A), Waratahs (H), Bye

Can they rediscover their attacking shape?

The Force started the season in fine form, winning two of their first three games to spend most of the first month in the top four. In fact, the Force were in the top six for nine of the first 11 rounds, before dropping out in the last two weeks.

And they were playing well. The lofty position they occupied on the table was well deserved.

They did it with a clever kicking game from Ben Donaldson, playing wide when the opportunities were there, with really good guidance from Nic White at the base of the ruck.

But that shape has disappeared in recent weeks, culminating in a display against the Brumbies where – during the 31 per cent of the game they did have the ball – they looked rudderless and ineffective.

It wasn’t obvious to me until he came on just how much White had been missed. Forced to sit out the Chiefs game in New Zealand in Round 11, White came off the bench against the Blues in Auckland last week, and against the Brumbies on Saturday night.

But instantly, his arrival gave Donaldson more time and space to work with, and there was direction about the Force’s attack. It was a very welcome return for the veteran scrum-half.

The Force will need all of that if they are to beat the Drua in Lautoka on Saturday, and the Waratahs at home in their final match next weekend.

But even if they can, they will need some results to go their way. The maximum 32 points available to them would still only bring them up to the Reds’ current tally in fourth place, with the Hurricanes and Moana Pasifika above them both having one more win already and an extra game in hand over the Force.

Their attacking shape will be crucial over the final rounds from here, but it also feels like the Force might need prayers and a four-leaf clover just as much.