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 – 2nd 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 – 4th 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 – 8th 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 – 9th 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.
I got a pleasant surprise when you replied to my comment on Nick's article because you hadn’t written an article here for a fair while.
Talent wise, the Reds should be the top Australian side. The fact they're not is frustrating. The lineout has malfunctioned, sometimes at the worst possible time like in Fiji.
However the lineout worked well on Friday night but the weak shouldered defence annoyed me during the first half.
Come the end of the season, I feel like the Brumbies will probably rue their extremely disappointing performance at home to the Hurricanes nearly 3 weeks ago.
Ha, thanks Mitch. I had to take some time sort something out, that sadly went into a second week - but great to be back in the routine, and glad this column went down well.
You might be right about the Brumbies. Though the Force loss in Rd.2 probably stung more at the time, as it undid a 16 or 17 game streak at home, and they had ample opportunity to win..
Cheers Brett. Been a funny season for us Force fans. Stranger than usual!
But in a good way, generally speaking, right?
“All other teams remain in contention for the play-offs”. So it is a really interesting competition this year, a tippers nightmare, bully boys being bullied, all teams having individuals doing truly stupid things, coaches confounding expectations, and on both sides of the ball. Who can rise above all this and win this year ? This is a really interesting article, Brett. Thanks for putting this article together for us, Brett. Great read.
One thing I am really enjoying is how you and our other writers that I follow(this and on other sites) are using statistics, cleverly weaving into the narratives. Having lived all of our time in Australia in Qld, they are my team. Actually they were before we came here, when I saw them long ago beat Ulster on an awful wet cold night at Ravenhill. That was impressive from a team who came from a sunshine state.
Your statistics on Qld. are very revealing. And I would concur with you when you write “At the start of this season, I expected Queensland to be the best Australian team”. I have known of and watched the progress of Les Kiss since 1995, the year we moved to Bundaberg and I saw his photograph proudly displayed in Bundaberg State High, the only lad from a strong RL school to have played for Australia, played State of Origin. When he came home to Qld. I had very high hopes, and up to the playoffs last season those hopes were realised. He began to transform the Reds into a team that played an attractive and effective game. Then the deep disappointment of the loss to the Chiefs. Not so much the fact teh Reds lost, but the way they lost.
This season they have, in my view, the most powerful squad in Australia, a squad that should dominate here, and be capable of beating any of the NZ sides. Getting the players from the wreck of the Melbourne Rebels has only strengthened them. Daugunu has come back the Bne. a far better player than when he left, for example, Lachie Anderson may well come into WB contention. And LSL has the season with Northampton plus his rebels experience to add. Canham must come into WB contention.
But there is something missing, and your stats. allude to this. I have been a coach in my time, been lucky enough to part of a team that was the best in my country one year. So I know the highs. But also the lows, and how fickle support is when a team does not win as expected. I have been told “If you were in business, you would be sacked”. (I coached at schools 1st XV level in the amateur era). Thus I will never down any coach, will always have a deeper understanding than those who pick up the nearest stone mindlessly.
“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.” It is these two, dominant carrying and off loading, that the Kiss team would need to fix if the team is to win this years SR. Also the lineout strategy. Uru has great hands, great swift leaper.
I had better stop here…becoming an article in itself, daylight is here, and I also want to lookat Nick Bishops article before breakfast. Will be back later, with shorter comments😀
Really good post Mzil, an enjoyable 10 minutes getting through it 😆
Glad you enjoyed the column, and it was nice to get back into the writing routine.
The stats point you make is interesting, and I don’t mind admitting that learning more about and looking at the data created within the Opta Club Hub has been a real game changer for me.
We’ve looked at the standard stats and we’ve all used them and interpreted them the way we can to create the narrative we’re angling toward. But sometimes, those simple ‘public stats’ (I’ll call them) just don’t tell the story of the game or how a team plays.
The Club Hub data set is different in that it collates different elemeents completely. So yes, still things like number of offloads, or lineouts won, but also, offloads leading to tries or line breaks, or whether lineouts are won at the front or middle or back. How often a team plays wider than the first or second receiver.
It allows us (and it has for me in this piece) to quantify what we’re all probably seeing on the field, and thus you can build a different narrative, and a different story angle.
The Reds gainline + offloads mention is a really good example of this..