Chiefs coach dines out on having ‘the two best scrums in the comp’
Chiefs coach Clayton McMillan has fired back at claims from the Reds that his side were playing games at scrum time during their win in Brisbane on Friday night.
The Chiefs hung tough to claim a 27-25 Super Rugby Pacific victory at Suncorp Stadium, after which McMillan revelled in his side having ‘‘not just the best scrum, but the two best scrums in the competition’’.
Several times the visitors work up front was rewarded with a penalty by referee Paul Williams, most notably in the final stages of the first half, which saw Cortez Ratima eventually score off the back of a wheeled effort.
The Queenslanders had lost star prop Taniela Tupou during that phase and later on the TV broadcast it was mentioned that the home side were blowing up on the sideline about supposed illegal scrummaging tactics being employed by the Kiwi side.
But McMillan was able to have the last laugh, not missing in his post-match press conference when responding to the Reds’ howls.
Initially claiming the Chiefs feel they have the best scrum of any side going, it then became the best two, such is the depth he feels they possess.
‘‘Some of our work in training is harder than what we’re getting at times in games,’’ he said. ‘‘And that’s not to say there aren’t some bloody good scrums out there, but we just don’t feel like we have to play silly buggers to get rewarded at scrum time.
‘‘We’re happy to go there and challenge teams. I think the referees got it right. I know the man in the middle with the whistle will probably get a lot of flak for raising his arm, but do a little digging, you’d see that it was actually the blokes on the sideline [the assistant referees] that had the best view in the house that were calling those penalties.
‘‘The other thing we’re probably the best at is we’re the most disciplined team in the competition. There’s no need to wheel when you’ve got a lot of confidence in your scrum, you just scrum square over the ball, you just be prepared to scrum for as long as a referee allows you to scrum.
‘‘That was part of our plan against the Reds, they’ve got a good scrum themselves, but we wanted to see if they were prepared to scrum for longer, and as it turns out, sometimes they weren’t.’’
The Chiefs’ scrum has been a strong point for some time now, having been a massive part of their remarkable turnaround in fortunes last year, where they snapped their record 11-game losing run and made the Super Rugby Aotearoa final, with scrum coach Nick White having been paid plenty of credit.
Alongside All Blacks frontrowers Angus Ta’avao and Samisoni Taukei’aho, Aidan Ross has stood up time and again to press his claims for higher honours, while four-test prop Atu Moli is slowly getting back to fitness and young Waikato duo Ollie Norris and George Dyer have continued to impress.
With their latest powerful pack effort, the Chiefs now find themselves in the top four – a place which would earn a home quarterfinal – and know how vital this latest result may be.
‘‘It was an ugly kind of game, but in the context of our season, I think we’ll look back and realise just how important it was to get a W,’’ McMillan said.
Stand-in captain Luke Jacobson, who came up with the final match-winning penalty play, said he was ‘‘bloody proud of the lads’’ and that there was no doubt the Australian sides had lifted in the past two years.