Chiefs wary of horror repeat
Two New Zealand derbies, and two wins in the bank, the Chiefs are confident they can now guard against any complacency when tackling the Sunwolves in Tokyo today.
Getting up for the all-Kiwi clashes, where it’s invariably top quality and the points on offer all the more crucial in a conference format, is the easy bit.
When you’re sitting pretty at 2-0 and then hit the road to Japan to face the perennial strugglers, there is the potential for a natural drop in intensity, no matter how unintentional.
But if the Chiefs needed any sort of reminder of the ramifications of a below-par mental state, and what the Sunwolves are indeed capable of, they only had to look back to this exact point in the competition last year.
In contrast to this season, they were 0-2, coming off a walloping by the Brumbies in Canberra, but a home date against the Sunwolves was going to be the perfect fixture to put them back on track. Just turn up and she’ll be right.
Of course, that fateful night in Hamilton ended in an embarrassing 30-15 defeat, the Chiefs becoming the Sunwolves’ first away-from-home scalp. And it’s an occasion which has indeed been spoken about this week, as the 2020 high-flyers look to continue their fine start.
‘‘Yeah, it’s been touched on,’’ stand-in captain Brad Weber said. ‘‘We turned up with a pretty average attitude that night. I think we just realised that it doesn’t matter about the history, how many times an
opposition has won in this competition, if you don’t turn up on the day, you get your arses kicked.’’
The other way Chiefs coach Warren Gatland feels he is ensuring his team don’t get ahead of themselves is with the introduction of several fresh faces in a fortnight (including the Brumbies next weekend) he had always intended to rest some big guns.
‘‘We’re in a great position, because the players coming in know that the ones that started the first two games have done a good job,’’ he said of a lineup which will feature five players getting their first start of the year, along with three on the bench set for their first outings of the campaign.
‘‘And for me, if I was a player coming in I’d be unbelievably motivated to want to go out there and do well and wouldn’t be taking the Sunwolves for granted at all, and [feeling] that I’ve got a responsibility, because the team has started so well in the first two games.
‘‘Sometimes it’s easy enough to get complacent and take things too easy, but I don’t think we’re in that situation at all. We’re in a position where there’s a huge amount of motivation to go out and want to continue to do what we’ve done.’’
Gatland said the unique Japan trip would also be good for the squad in that it changed things up in regards to their schedule, including an unfamiliar early kickoff of 12.45pm local time, followed by a flight home that night.
The only previous time the Chiefs travelled to face the Sunwolves – in 2018 – they thrashed the hosts 61-10, which remains a franchise-record equal-biggest winning margin (along with their 59-8 demolition of the Rebels in Melbourne last year).
The Sunwolves, while clearly becoming more of a threat in recent years, have still only once not finished bottom of the overall standings in their four seasons in the competition (second-to-last in 2017).
With news of their axing after this season, they retained only three players from last year’s squad (one pick-up is Waikato loose forward and former Chiefs squad member Mitch Jacobson) but came out of the blocks well with a 36-27 win over the Rebels in Fukuoka and will come in fresh after the bye.