It’s now or never for the Hurricanes
What do the Bulls, Crusaders, Highlanders, Brumbies and Chiefs all have in common?
In this instance, it’s that each has physically dominated the Hurricanes this season, en route to Super Rugby victories. The Sharks, and maybe even the Reds and Sunwolves too, might argue they also beat the Hurricanes up; it’s just that they didn’t get the wins to show for it.
It doesn’t matter who is in the Hurricanes’ back-three, when they meet the Chiefs at Westpac Stadium on Friday. Whether Wes Goosen’s able to recover from his head knock, and play at centre, is immaterial. You might even argue that having Beauden Barrett and TJ Perenara on deck isn’t important either.
If the Hurricanes’ pack get dominated at the breakdown, as they were against the Chiefs in Hamilton last Friday, and have been in all five losses this year, then the team’s 2018 campaign will end at the quarterfinal stage.
The Hurricanes know all that. They’ve had plenty of meetings and spent lots of time trying to find a hard, physical edge on the training paddock. But the longer this season’s gone on, the less often they’ve been able to produce the actions to match their good intentions.
‘‘We’ve got no choice now. If we don’t get it right this week, that’s the end of our season,’’ Hurricanes coach Chris Boyd said. ‘‘That’s a strong motivation for us. It’s a strong motivation for the Chiefs as well. It’s playoff footy and, if you don’t get it right, then you go home.’’
And that’s the issue for Boyd. He’s been saying for weeks – as much, you assume, for the benefit of the players as anyone else – that you can’t turn up for knockout football and just flick a switch.
If you haven’t been playing well prior, and don’t have any winning momentum, then you won’t suddenly generate it.
It’s months since the Hurricanes played to their potential. You probably need to go all the way back to April 13, when they beat the Chiefs 25-13, to find evidence of that, and they ended the round-robin phase of the competition by losing four of their last five matches.
The charitable might argue that last Friday represented a hiding to nothing. Boyd said the ‘‘number one goal’’ had been to go to Hamilton and secure a home quarterfinal and, ultimately, the Hurricanes did. But talk about making hard work of it.
From 21-0 down, against a makeshift Chiefs lineup that finished with 14 players, the Hurricanes lost 28-24, having produced the kind of insipid rugby that’s become a recent trademark.
‘‘We all know that that performance is not good enough to get us going further in the competition,’’ said Boyd.
Who now has to hope something better can be conjured from thin air.
It remains to be seen if they have to do that without the injured duo of Brad Shields (rib cartilage) and Goosen (head knock). Both were ‘‘50-50’’ for Friday, said Boyd.
Lock Vaea Fifita ought to be over his toe injury and then there’s flanker Ardie Savea, who’s battling back from an ankle sprain.
Goosen failed his Head Injury Assessment on Friday and his absence would require quite a backline reshuffle.
Super Rugby wrap p31