Canes tinkering explodes in Hammett’s face

Just when you think Hurricanes coach Mark Hammett is making progress, he pulls out another reminder that he is still a novice making rookie mistakes.

In just his second year as a head coach, Hammett has been as hard to get a line through as most of his playing squad.

Just a week after pulling out their best performance of the season against the Highlanders, the Hurricanes turn a 25-16 lead into a 37-25 loss to the Brumbies to start the weekend.

Hammett’s pre-match decision to shuffle the decks and leave out Faifili Levave and Beauden Barrett from his starting side always looked like a risky move.

His rationale behind the decision was the pair needed some time out after such a heavy workload three quarters of the way through the Super Rugby season.

Once the most unpopular man in the capital, Hammett offered himself up for more criticism, especially if the Hurricanes lost.

While Hammett is in the best position to judge the physical state of his players, his decision to bring in Tusi Pisi and Brad Shields looked odd, especially with the June international break just around the corner.

It looked even stranger when you consider the Hurricanes desperately needed points to stay in the playoff race.

His decision was not helped by Pisi having little impact in the game while Shields had a shocker. The newly established All Blacks training squad member will be embarrassed at the way he lost the ball to halfback Ian Prior which led directly to a Brumbies try.

The loss of Cory Jane early might have disrupted Hammett’s plans to use Barrett off the bench and on the front line but we’ll never know.

We’ll also probably never know why he bothered to draft attacking midfielder Jayden Hayward on to the bench if he was only going to give him nine minutes’ game time when the game had all but gone.

Watching everything unfold on the television screen, like most Hurricanes supporters these days (only 9000 turned up to the Cake Tin), it’s not always easy to judge how players are coping with the demands of the game.

But to me, Tim Bateman looked off his in the second half on Friday and Hayward could have been more than useful running at rookie Brumbies first five-eighth Zach Holmes.

It’s also hard to imagine how Barrett, a superbly fit 20-year-old, needed rest, especially less than a week after he was named in the All Blacks training squad and when he was probably desperate to impress the national selectors from first five-eighth.

I know, it’s easy to be wise after the event, but it’s also easy to be wise beforehand, too. ROYAL FLUSH Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich trumped his Manchester City counterparts in their game of billionaire boys’ football poker when his side somehow beat Bayern Munich in the Champions League final.

Chelsea defended their way to their first ever European crown, just as they had done when they knocked out raging favourites Barcelona in the semifinals.

While Didier Drogba received most of the plaudits after their win, for me the most underrated performance came from defender Gary Cahill.

The former Bolton man was struggling right up until match day with a hamstring problem but gutsed it out for not just 90 minutes, but the half hour of extra time too.

While it might have looked like Bayern were reckless in front of goal, and they were at times, Cahill managed time and again to put any German with the ball at his feet under pressure.

The game might have been as dull as dishwater for the most part, but you can’t beat a penalty shootout for drama and despair.