Hurricanes too strong

FOR any coach who sees his team win 59-0 there’s got to be plenty to please him and that was exactly the case with Jason Holland on Saturday night.

The Hurricanes outclassed Moana Pasifika at Mt Smart Stadium, bagging nine tries and becoming the first team ever to stop Moana Pasifika from scoring a point in a Super Rugby Pacific game.

The Hurricanes were ruthless when they had attacking opportunities, to the point where it almost felt like they were being cruel when they kept registering tries over the last 15 minutes.

For the Hurricanes to be regarded as title contenders this year, which they surely are, it’s these sorts of unforgiving performances that stand out and Holland got what he wanted from a team missing three All Blacks.

“I’m really happy with that,” Holland said.

“There were a couple of things during the week we really wanted to work on, one of them was our breakdown, carry clean and making sure we were accurate around that.

“We got that tonight, which meant we put Moana under pressure for long periods when we had the ball.

“So overall, we talked around how well we could do the simple things for the whole 80 and that’s probably one of the most satisfying things. That we kept going and were accurate for 80 minutes.”

For Moana Pasifika coach Aaron Mauger, this was a painful watch. The team had been making progress this season, despite coming just short in two opportunities to win games, but this was ugly.

“It was a tough night for us tonight,” Mauger said.

“Obviously I know the boys will be disappointed with the scoreline and large parts of the performance, on our home ground and in front of our people.

“It hurt, but the Hurricanes were very good and you’ve got to give them credit where they were good and that was around the collision.

“We previewed that and worked through it during the week. But they were just too good.

“We were guilty of sitting back and waiting for them to show us how good they were at times. You can’t afford to do that against a quality side like them.

“They got their momentum on and we found it hard once they got a roll on.”

Moana Pasifika did put the Hurricanes under pressure at the beginning of both halves, but ruined those opportunities with silly errors.

“That’s a gap in our game to be fair,” Mauger said.

“We have scored lots of points up until tonight and we have put the best defences under pressure and scored points. Go back to last week against the Brumbies where we scored 36.

“Tonight, the Hurricanes were tenacious there and we weren’t quite patient enough and had a couple of lapses around the set piece and a few missed assignments around the breakdown and they shut us out.

“I think we’ve got to give credit to them, but we need to be better.”

With just a six-day turnaround before Moana Pasifika host the Highlanders, there isn’t long to dwell on this result and the work will begin on picking the players up after this disappointing night.

“It’s always tough, but that’s our job, to get them back up and that’s what we do every week, to build belief in what we’re capable of,” Mauger said.

“It’s always tougher when you’re on the receiving end of a scoreline like that, but we’ll have to find some positives in there.”There are plenty of positives and we’ve got to keep identifying those gaps of where we need to be better.”