Chiefs deliver Lowe blow
It might ‘only’ be the Sunwolves, but the Chiefs have delivered a notso-subtle size 12 up the backside of one of their regular stars, with winger James Lowe’s demotion from this weekend’s starting XV purely form related.
The man with 44 caps under his belt has been a mainstay on the left wing over recent seasons, and been a particularly key ingredient of the Chiefs’ high-tempo x-factor game - with superb evasion, brilliant support play, fine offloading, and not to mention a huge raking left-foot to ease them out of their own area.
But come tomorrow night, the 24-year-old will be in the unfamiliar spot of the reserve bench at FMG Stadium Waikato, with the coaching team feeling he had undelivered in the past few weeks, and preferring to reward makeshift centre Sam McNicol with a return to his preferred spot on the flank.
It was a telling omission in and around the mass revamp from the team which ground out an ugly 16-7 win over the Force in Perth last weekend.
Changes had been telegraphed, and all told there were nine personnel and three positional ones, with fresh legs sought after a taxing three-week trek overseas.
Lowe was far from alone in not being at his best against the Force, and apart from the odd missed tackle or fumble in weeks previous, hadn’t exactly appeared out of sorts.
Assistant coach Andrew Strawbridge noted the team was guilty of losing the ball in the outside channels last week, and the man headed for Leinster at the end of the season had paid a price.
‘‘It’d be fair to say that that might have been a form selection,’’ Strawbridge said.
‘‘Our last couple of performances haven’t been as sharp as we would’ve liked, so there’s been a couple of casualties around that.
‘‘I think he needs an opportunity to recharge, I think he needs a challenge.
‘‘He is very important to us moving forward. He’s one of our best communicators, he works really well in the back three.
‘‘James will be expected to come on and do some damage, and show us some powerful, assertive play.
‘‘He’s in a battle to start for the Reds [next weekend].’’
All told, there are just three players - Damian McKenzie, Aaron Cruden and Dominic Bird - who will wear their same numbers as last week, with Michael Leitch, Brodie Retallick, Siegfried Fisi’ihoi and Atu Moli the players rested from the 23 altogether.
Prop Nepo Laulala returns from the concussion which kept him out of the overseas tour, while the Chiefs were always eyeing up fellow non-tourists Mitchell Karpik and Tom Sanders to return to the back-row, and have shuffled cocaptain Sam Cane to No 8 accordingly.
An eyebrow-raising move was to not name a halfback among the reserves. With Tawera KerrBarlow on the mend from concussion, and going to be rested anyway, and Finlay Christie suspended for three weeks for stamping, Jonathan Taumateine was predictably named to start, though he will now be expected to go the full 80, with Bay of Plenty’s Richard Judd seemingly in line to back him up, only for it to be deemed too much for him to learn in a short space of time. So Cruden will play the backup No 9 role.
‘‘We’ve used Aaron the last five or six years a number of times covering halfback for us and we’re confident he can do a job there,’’ Strawbridge said.
While the Sunwolves are last in the Africa One conference, with one win from eight, having gone down 50-3 to the Crusaders then
40-15 to the Highlanders on their New Zealand tour, Strawbridge noted that no matter who they
were playing, there were still going to be particular changes, with Retallick one of those.
‘‘You base your season and your planning around when you’re going to rest people and not rest people, based on who you’re playing, and who you think you can cope with,’’ he said.
‘‘I don’t think it matters who [what team] it is.
‘‘We played the Force last week and according to the media they weren’t supposed to have been too much of a hurdle, and we struggled to put them away.’’