Superb start
Canes go crazy in Tokyo
In no particular order, here’s what’s emerged from the Hurricanes’ opening match of the 2017 Super Rugby season.
The defending champions are a fair side and have good depth. In beating the hapless Sunwolves 83-17 in Tokyo on Saturday, the Hurricanes played some very attractive and accurate footy.
The Sunwolves, though, are poor. In fact if they continue to be this poorly-resourced and organised, then they have no business being in the competition.
On that basis, you could argue that the Hurricanes’ win wasn’t just worthless, but actually costly.
Wing Cory Jane and No.8 Blade Thomson were the collateral damage and seem destined for spells on the sideline after sustaining neck and shoulder injuries, respectively.
Jane, the onfield brains and voice of the Hurricanes’ defence, went down during Friday’s captain’s run and indicated on Twitter than he ‘‘could be out of rugby for a bit’’.
Thomson missed the back-end of last season with a shoulder injury and is now likely to be sidelined ‘‘for a little while now’’, according to Hurricanes assistant coach John Plumtree. In isolation, their absences probably aren’t the end of the world. But when you ally them to that of lock Vaea Fifita and throw in the fact the Hurricanes are defending champions, then the situation looks less promising.
When the everyone else in the competition is out to get you, losing your better, more influential players makes things that bit harder.
As the Sunwolves showed, not every opponent actually ends up providing much opposition. But on those occasions, the Hurricanes are determined to apply the acid to themselves.
‘‘Doing well last year’s given the side more confidence. What we’re working hard on is trying to take our rugby to another level,’’ Plumtree said.
‘‘Obviously the challenges are going to be a lot greater coming up than what we faced today, but everything we do we’re just trying to do better and the players are buying into that and the leaders are driving it and that’s the pleasing thing for us.’’
Coches can be notoriously hard markers but Plumtree was generous in his praise for the Hurricanes yesterday.
It would’ve been easy to focus on the final quarter of the match and now 83-5 ended up becoming 83-17.
Plumtree, though, preferred to concentrate on how good the 60 minutes prior had been.
The Hurricanes had gone to halftime 45-5 up and did a reasonable job of going on with that in the second spell, despite Michael Fatialofa earning a spell in the sinbin and Thomson going down.
Offloads, exemplary support play, cross kicks, individual athleticism, rehearsed lineout moves; there weren’t many ways the Hurricanes didn’t conjure tries during the first half. It was quality stuff, but no more than the champs ought to produce against a side of the Sunwolves’ modest ability.
Ardie Savea got the Hurricanes under way, with right wing Vince Aso next in. Ricky Riccitelli, TJ Perenara, Julian Savea and Ngani Laumape soon followed. It was hard to think of a player who wasn’t contributing or performing to a high level, but the backline looked particularly good under the stewardship of Otere Black.
Fatialofa (twice), Thomson, Brad Shields, Aso and Wes Goosen added second-half tries for the victors, with Black converting the majority of them.