Wild Predictions
01 Five NZ Teams to Make Playoffs
It’s going to happen and this is the year. The Blues will win a few games, play some decent rugby and while they won’t often beat fellow New Zealand teams, they will beat plenty of the Australian and South African sides and accumulate enough points to make the last eight.
02 Reds Reach the Last Eight
This isn’t inspired by any great feelings about the Reds...more that the competition, once you get past the four best New Zealand teams, Lions and Waratahs has a large number of teams that are fairly mediocre.
The Reds, even if they vaguely get their act together, could make the last eight easily enough and we think they will vaguely get their act together.
Brad Thorn picked a young squad in 2018 with a long term view and having been together for 12 months, they should be stronger and wiser this year.
03 Quade Cooper to earn Wallabies Recall
Obviously you might think this is being said purely for shock-horror impact. But nah, look, the Wallabies are desperate and pretty much anything goes over there at the moment. Combine that with the fact that the Wallabies haven’t been able to make up their minds about who should lead their backline. Is it Bernard Foley, Kurtley Beale or Matt Toomua? They don’t know and they don’t seem to want to make a decision so if Quade isn’t awful at the Rebels, they might recall him and install him at No 10 for the World Cup hoping he’ll spark something in tandem with Will Genia.