Canes aim to unleash talented backline
It can be a cold, lonely existence standing on the wing of a rugby team getting dominated up front.
But that was Ben Lam’s lot last weekend as his Hurricanes forward pack struggled to match it with the Crusaders in the first half of their 38-22 loss in Christchurch.
So when the blockbusting wing received the ball 15 metres inside his own half seven minutes into the second half, you had to guess there was a fair amount of pent up frustration waiting to be unleashed.
With a little bit of space in front of him he was able to get up a decent head of steam, beating three Crusaders defenders down the left wing. He then fed Matt Proctor inside him, who was tackled close to the line. Lam was first man on the scene to clear out the ruck, before regaining his feet to get to the next ruck and score from a pick and go.
Lam said he only had one thing on his mind when he got the ball in that situation.
‘‘I sort of knew I hadn’t touched the ball in a while, so I just got it and thought ‘go, go for the line’.
‘‘Once you do get the ball, there is sort of nothing else going through your head but going forward.’’
At the time, it seemed like the first time Lam had touched the ball in the match, and he didn’t really feature much again until finishing off a length-of-the-field try just before the 80 minutes were up.
After the match, it was surprising to see Lam had carried the ball 10 times for 69m in the match, but about 65 of those metres came on his two tryscoring efforts.
Lam’s eight other carries for about 10 metres showed he was at least trying to get involved in other areas of the park. Only loose forward Reed Prinsep had more carries than him with 12.
‘‘If you’re not getting the ball, you’ve got to get into the game any way you can,’’ Lam said. ‘‘It can get pretty cold out there, sometimes you lose a bit of focus, but if you can find other ways to get into the game, it’s good.’’
Hurricanes coach John Plumtree was happy with both Lam, and right wing Wes Goosen’s, finishing in the second half.
Both wings were able to find space only after their forward pack had started to get over the gain line with increasing frequency.
Plumtree said they wanted to get the ball in the hands of their finishers more often against the Brumbies tonight in Palmerston North, but that couldn’t happen without pressure first being built.
‘‘It’s about us being patient and making sure when we give the ball to Ben he’s actually got a little bit of space or one-on-one opportunities.
‘‘We’re probably just a little bit guilty of not building enough pressure. That’s been our big focus. We know that if it’s not on, we’ve got to build and build through our forwards.
‘‘That’s something we’ve talked about and worked hard on, but it’s got to come into our game. That’s where I’ve put the players under pressure a bit [this week]. That our momentum game around our work up the middle of the park is good and that we do pick the times to go to Wes and Ben and Vinnie [Vince Aso].’’
The Brumbies named David Pocock to start at No 7. He played only five minutes of their seasonopener against the Rebels before sustaining a concussion which kept him out of their 54-17 win over the Chiefs last weekend.