Rennie credits Sunwolves but admits Chiefs’ game ‘fell short’
As far as homecomings go, this one was as underwhelming as they come.
A wet night in Hamilton, and the Sunwolves as opposition, were the key ingredients for the perfect storm, as the 10,657 faithful had to cringe in watching the Chiefs prevail just 27-20 against Super Rugby’s lowest-ranked side.
When the hosts at FMG Stadium Waikato, on return from three weeks overseas, added their own inadequacies into the recipe, the end product was always going to be unappetising. As it turned out, the icing was even non-existent, with a naturally-assumed bonus point not even being attained.
Coach Dave Rennie summed it up as a ‘‘frustrating night’’, where despite being able to produce just enough flashes of brilliance, the Chiefs, and those in the stands, in the end had to keep glancing nervously at the scoreboard, as the Japanese franchise brought plenty of desire and never folded, as has usually been the case with them.
‘‘They’re a lot better side than they were round one,’’ Rennie noted. ‘‘I thought they played well, they certainly kept the ball in hand, and challenged us. The game was a lot tighter at the end than we would have hoped. We made pretty hard work of it.’’
It’s been the story with the Chiefs of late, having started the season with a hiss and a roar with three local derby wins, before struggling against overseas foe, and seemingly not being up for the contest against sides where there’s an expectation of a big win.
‘‘We’ve won eight out of nine, but we really have high expectations around the quality of our performance, and really tonight was, not even about how many points we score, but to try and put a performance on that we’re bloody proud of, and we still fell short
We really have high expectations around the quality of our performance. Dave Rennie
tonight,’’ Rennie said. ‘‘After last week’s performance against the Force we were pretty clear on what every team brings to this comp. The key for a lot of those is you’ve got to put them out of it early. At 20-3 we had an opportunity, but we needed to score first [in the second half] probably.’’
In the end the Sunwolves in fact won the second stanza 17-7, and Rennie lamented the fact his side seemed to go too far the other way in trying to rectify the issues of last week, where they weren’t patient enough with ball in hand.
‘‘We had a focus during the week that we wanted to actually hang onto the ball and build phases, and we took that to the letter - we picked and picked and picked until there was no other option to go forward. So not enough balance in our attack. We really battled at set piece, we couldn’t get our lineout going, which has been excellent all year, we got penalised a lot at scrum time, so that made it difficult. The backline barely touched the ball tonight.’’
When they did, they at least made it count, with Damian McKenzie producing enough of his magic to keep the Chiefs from wearing blushes - scoring two tries himself and playing a lovely hand in another. Though the man who has played every minute of every game, just as he did last season, was quick to note it was ‘‘not a one man team’’.
‘‘I’m just lucky I’m getting a few good balls off what everyone else is doing,’’ he said, adding he felt they weren’t too far off exploding into action. We’re playing some good footy at times, and stringing together some good plays, it’s just a matter of building a bit more pressure and just being patient, and then points will come after that.
‘‘We can’t growl too much, obviously at the start of the season if we said we’d be eight from nine, we would have taken that.’’