Confused Canes count cost
Weaknesses exposed in worrying loss
Well, of course he’s going to say that.
And so would you if you were parked in the same spot as Hurricanes backs coach Jason Holland. Out-muscled and out-thought by the Crusaders on Saturday, the Hurricanes’ hopes of a home Super Rugby playoff run look remote.
Saturday’s 20-12 defeat might only have been their second of the season. It’s just that, propped up next to the first – an equally inept loss to the Chiefs in Hamilton – it’s easy to suspect the defending champs might not have the wherewithal to go back-to-back.
Holland, though, thinks different.
‘‘We’re still a chance and there’s no reason why we can’t go through and win all of our [five remaining] games,’’ Holland said yesterday.
‘‘I know some of the New Zealand teams have still got to play each other as well. Look, obviously [the unbeaten] Crusaders have got a bit of a jump on us now but we win our last five – which is exactly what we’re going to try and do – then I think we’re still a chance.
‘‘We play the Crusaders and the Crusaders play the Chiefs and the Highlanders are involved there as well, so still a lot of water to under the bridge in terms of the Kiwi teams playing each other.’’
Last year, an emphatic 35-10 win over the Crusaders in Christchurch secured the Hurricanes the immense advantage of staying home for the playoffs. This time around, they never even looked like it.
On Saturday they host the Cheetahs before away games against the Bulls and Force, then clashes with the Chiefs and Crusaders at Westpac Stadium. Beating bad teams by plenty hasn’t big a huge issue for the Hurricanes it’s just that – without wanting to labour the point too much – both the good teams they’ve played this year have manhandled them. Surely that’s a bit of a worry? ‘‘Last night and the Chiefs game we got a pretty clear picture of the areas we need to be better and maybe they took our time and space away a bit more and that’s why we came under pressure. We’ll look hard at that and our skillsets and the set-piece parts of the game,’’ said Holland.
‘‘The other thing we need to consider is both of those games that we lost weren’t great conditions for handling the ball. Obviously the wet one against the Chiefs and she was really greasy in Christchurch, so we’ve got to maybe have a think about how we keep playing our game when it’s a little bit harder to handle [the ball].
‘‘So that’s something we’ve got
‘‘Some of our skillsets around a simple catch-pass were really poor.’’ Jason Holland, Hurricanes assistant coach
to work through and make sure we can keep playing with tempo, but maybe be a little bit cleverer.’’
You could dwell on any number of aspects from Saturday’s loss. The scrum and lineout performances, for instance, would have embarrassed the forwards, while some of the work at the breakdown and the refereeing of Jaco Peyper were interesting.
For Holland’s part, execution and option-taking were the concern.
He accepted that the Hurricanes’ backs weren’t served up terrific ball but ‘‘some of our skillsets around a simple catch-pass were really poor’’.
Beauden Barrett’s kicking in general play was occasionally hard to fathom too.
The rule of thumb is you kick deep for territory, kick to touch or kick to contest the ball, and there were occasions when his were none of the above.
‘‘That’s another key area of what we’ve looked at this morning. We were stuck between kicking long and kicking contestable and we gave gave them good field position and gave the ball back to them quite easily at times,’’ Holland said.
All up, the Hurricanes looked a team unused to genuine opposition and unsure how to respond to it.