Chiefs bank record win, set sights on capital classic

Super Rugby Pacific’s bland bye season is about to suddenly get spicy, with the most mouthwatering of matchups to be dished up this weekend.

And, with a franchise-record win rammed into the history books, the Chiefs will head into the capital classic with confidence fully restored, as they seek to be the first team to inflict defeat on the high-flying Hurricanes.

Bouncing back from their surprise loss to the Crusaders by beating Moana Pasifika in Hamilton on Saturday night was one thing, but doing it by way of a 68-12 scoreline was another, as coach Clayton McMillan finally got to see the complete performance he had been craving.

Last year’s runners-up gave a decent reminder why they remain favourites to go one better this season, showing off the depth in their ranks in a game where they sat out captain Luke Jacobson and Shaun Stevenson on All Blacks rest, had fellow international Josh Lord unavailable through injury, and didn’t even select another in Quinn Tupaea.

And they did not miss a beat. In fact, they raised the tempo plenty. Helped by a rather charitable inexperienced Moana side who were full of mistakes, the hosts put the foot down to not only mark their biggest-ever win, but also score 10 tries in a game for the first time (seven times they had managed nine) and notch their second-highest-ever score (behind only their crazy 72-65 win over the Lions in Johannesburg in 2010).

“Good,” was the rather understated way McMillan initially summed it all up soon after fulltime at Waikato Stadium, acknowledging he had no idea of the franchise records broken.

“It’s nice, but I don’t think we make a big deal out of it. We made quite a few changes today, they [Moana Pasifika] certainly were missing a lot of their frontline players. So as much as we loved the win, we’ve got to put it all in perspective.”

Instead, the coach noted this was more just a “stepping stone to where we want to get to”, and was more impressed with the way his troops did not let up in the way they had previously this season, after yet another fast start and a commanding 28-0