Canes in no mood to ease off
Nothing wrong with a wee bit of stirring. Especially when you’re about to play the same team two weeks in a row.
Everyone assumes the Chiefs have to spell first five-eighth Damian McKenzie from Friday’s clash with the Hurricanes in Hamilton. Or do they?
‘‘I suppose the Chiefs have the opportunity to play D Mac this week and rest him for the quarter [final] maybe,’’ Hurricanes attack coach Jason Holland said yesterday.
Let’s see.
Barring a 23-point hiding on Friday, there’s every chance the Hurricanes will host the Chiefs in a quarterfinal the following week. Given how secretive, even paranoid, teams can be about what they give away and who might be deciphering their tactics, these back-to-back games pose some interesting questions.
A couple of months ago it would not have been a shock to see the Hurricanes roll over and play dead on Friday. But the three defeats that preceded Saturday’s 42-24 win over the Blues mean they don’t feel in a position to get too cute.
‘‘Where we’ve come from in the season, and getting the win at the weekend, we want to gather momentum. So we’re going to attack this game. We want to win this game, we want to make sure we’re at home and giving our boys the opportunity to play in front of our awesome crowd again,’’ Holland said.
Flanker Sam Cane’s latest head knock means he’s likely to join McKenzie on the sideline for Friday. That’s two highly influential players to be without but won’t, at least in the Hurricanes’ minds, change how the Chiefs play.
‘‘We know what they’re going to bring. We know they’re going to be physical, direct. It’s always an interesting old battle between the two forward packs, so we know we have to be direct and and be nice and strong physically in everything we do around collisions, around carry, around tackle,’’ Holland said.
Holland earned praise from Hurricanes head coach Chris Boyd for the subtle way he exploited the Blues’ defence on Saturday. He’d noticed their inside backs were prone to bad decisions and put bodies in motion to confuse them.
‘‘Our set-piece was awesome. We had a square scrum [and] if you look at the lineout tries we scored, we got them off the back and the boys just ran good lines and picked good options,’’ Holland said.
‘‘But there’s always a lot of moving parts with these things and one thing helps a lot of other things become easier and that’s what happened with the setpiece.’’
They’ll need to be more abrasive against the Chiefs, though, and it will be interesting to see if Jordie Barrett’s bigger body is preferred to Wes Goosen at centre. Goosen isn’t huge but Holland ‘‘liked’’ what he saw from him against the Blues.
‘‘Wes is a great player. He’s got gas and he’s nice and tough in everything we want him to do around D [defence], around carry.’’
But in the absence of injured midfield backs Matt Proctor and Vince Aso, the Hurricanes have ‘‘still got to nail down the best nine or 10 backs in a match-day 23.’’
❚ ‘No beef with Rieko’ p28