Muddled Hurricanes crash to defeat
OPINION: The Hurricanes real 2017 record now stands at played two, lost two.
Never mind the other Super Rugby flotsam and jetsam that have drifted their way this season. The Hurricanes have had two big assignments and failed both in miserable fashion.
Beaten 26-18 by the Chiefs in March, Saturday’s 20-12 defeat to the Crusaders had similar hallmarks. Battered up front, the Hurricanes’ set pieces became suspect and their vaunted backline went to bits.
Simple catching and passing became hard work. Alignments were out, kicks became ineffective, pressure was never able to be applied.
Never mind all the trick plays and long-range tries dished up against the competition’s also-rans. When the Hurricanes have been confronted by legitimate opposition, they’ve lacked the physical and mental strength to combat it.
That’s not to say they can’t or that their season is over. It’s just that when they’ve needed to play well, the Hurricanes have not performed up to the standards they would expect of themselves.
Whether they turn around and put 50 points on the Cheetahs this Saturday is neither here nor there.
A couple of peripheral things before I go on.
Lots of people looked forward to this game. The top-scoring Hurricanes against the secondmost prolific Crusaders suggested a thrilling spectacle.
What people got was plenty of referee Jaco Peyper. Every decision he made might have been the right one. I don’t watch rugby for the refereeing and I suspect few others do either. Right or wrong, a night that fans were hoping to remember quickly became one to forget.
The Crusaders contributed to that. Limiting the Hurricanes’ ability to play was their obvious tactic and good luck to them. It’s not spoiling if you win, merely effective.
Their set-pieces are things of real beauty and their defensive line speed was something the Hurricanes hadn’t expected. In terms of devising a gameplan and executing it, the Crusaders were pretty well faultless.
Again, though, that kind of footy is a hard sell for those beyond the hardcore purists.
The Hurricanes can only dream – at this stage at least – of having the Crusaders’ aesthetic issue.
Set-piece failures of the sort the Hurricanes endured y are not easy to recover from. Referees are among the first to spot a second-rate scrum and the Hurricanes can’t expect many favours in that area.
Neither of the hookers – Ricky Riccitelli or Leni Apisai – hit their lineout targets as often as they’d like and the return of captain Dane Coles can’t come soon enough. His throwing is one thing, but it’s the skipper’s combative nature the team missed most on Saturday.
They finish the round-robin portion of the season by hosting the Chiefs on June 9 and the Crusaders on July 15. Both will believe they can manhandle the Hurricanes, and Coles and company will have to show they cannot.
Their season depends on it.