Juicy matchups enticing fare for selectors
Put aside, for a moment, the Dane Coles saga.
The Hurricanes’ skipper and hooker has firmed his chances of playing after running at training yesterday, but the result of this crucial semifinal hinges on the outcome of some juicy matchups across the park, which should have the All Blacks coaches licking their lips in anticipation.
It starts in the low numbers, as all rugby games hinge on the contest there.
Chiefs tighthead prop Atu Moli faces down his fellow Tongan mate from Waikato, Loni Uhila, who has kept his spot as Reggie Goodes remains on the sidelines after concussion. Kane Hames is an underrated scrummager who will give Ben May much to ponder. The Chiefs scrum is muchimproved from the April match, which ended in Golden Oldies, amid much gnashing of teeth. May and Uhila are not frontliners, but did the job to admirable effect against the Sharks.
It is hard to look past the Ardie Savea-Sam Cane openside contest as being instructional and perhaps pivotal. Savea is a better tackler than he is given credit for, while Cane is turning into a combative warrior, and he has shrugged off concussion against the since Saturday and have got through some things, so we will see what kind of pain I can put my body through.”
As much as it will be a nervous wait for Coles, it will be worse for the Hurricanes coaching staff.
Coles is a big cog in their wheel and there’s no point in pretending they will be the same team without him.
His influence is significant — both as captain and player. He’s not a conventional captain by any means and it works because the Hurricanes’ are, to some degree, an unconventional team. They always have been and the current crew are no different. Stormers to take his place on the side of the Chiefs’ scrum.
Cory Jane will have his hands full on the wing with James Lowe, while Willis Halaholo and Matt Proctor will test the sometimes frail defensive capabilities of All Black Seta Tamanivalu. Anton Lienert-Brown is a much stronger defensive footballer at No 12 for the Chiefs.
But most interest will come in the halves. Beauden Barrett was off training with a cold yesterday, but he and TJ Perenara, the latter coming off one his best matches as a pro, are as Ardie Savea is a player who can’t be neatly put in any box. He has no inhibitions or fixed notions about the limits of what he can do. Vaea Fifita is another outside the square player: rangy, athletic, tough and equally happy slicing open a defence on the outside as he is slugging it out in the scrum.
Then there is Cory Jane, a man who set the benchmark for being different and not worrying about what others think of him. The idiosyncratic characters make the Hurricanes the team they are and it’s Coles — himself a man always happy to plough his own path — who binds influential for the Hurricanes as Coles. Aaron Cruden has played well since the June test window, and his teaming with Brad Weber is bearing fruit, but Tawera Kerr-Barlow appeals as the sort of muscular No 9 more likely to keep Perenara quiet in his sniping around the fringes. Cruden will take the ball flat and look to put runners into holes, but can his kicking game match that of Barrett, who had the ball on a string in appalling conditions last Saturday night? Hurricanes coach Chris Boyd understandably saw no need to make any changes, other than bracketing Coles with Ricky Riccitelli, and he foresaw no scrum dramas this time. “There’ll be a good contest in the scrum. Their scrummaging has improved significantly since then, so I don’t think there’ll be any Golden Oldies,” says Boyd. “We’ve looked at the last half dozen games with the Chiefs and they are playing slightly differently, and so are we. If you give the Chiefs half a chance on the crumbs that get spilt they will punish you for it, so our ability to scramble on defence will be crucial.” About 25,000 tickets had been sold by yesterday, and, with decent weather forecast, the semifinal is on track to top 30,000, as it should. these disparate beings into a unified and powerful force.
He brings just as much in his playing portfolio, too. His set-piece work is immaculate. His speed, ball handling, dynamic running and tackling are just about irreplaceable. He’s in the freakish category for all of those skills and the Hurricanes attack will miss his near miraculous contributions.
The Hurricanes coaching staff know they won’t be the same force without Coles, but will still, in conjunction with Coles, have to make a cold, clinical decision about his fitness. Two changes to the Chiefs for tomorrow’s semifinal were straightforward — the fit-again Sam Cane and Seta Tamanivalu were always going to earn selection.
But the third and final alteration is where the intrigue lies ahead of the clash against the Hurricanes in Wellington, with Tawera KerrBarlow replacing Brad Weber in the No 9 jersey.
The two 25-year-olds have, when healthy, split the minutes at halfback this season. Removing