Ben the Brumbies prop feels scrums will be huge in ‘finals footy’
THE Brumbies have taken a lot of heart from their narrow defeat to the Stormers earlier this year.
They feel that match was theirs for the taking, and they may have won it had flyhalf Christian Lealiifano converted David Pocock’s try in the final minutes of that extremely physical encounter at Newlands.
There is also a sense of familiarity for the Australians when they made their way back to the Mother City this week for Saturday’s Super Rugby playoff. They are back in the same hotel, and they know the conditions and what to expect from the Newlands faithful on Saturday.
“It’s good for us. We are in the same hotel and everyone is familiar with the surroundings,” said prop Ben Alexander. “Newlands has a unique atmosphere and is a unique stadium. So the guys have experienced what that is like.
“We had a Test match-like game when we played them, it was an incredibly physical game. We know it’s going to be up a notch, and the crowd is going to be bigger and more vocal.”
The Stormers’ scrum dominance helped see off the Australian side last month, while the Brumbies’ discipline also let them down on that lovely autumn afternoon.
And those are two areas they are keen to improve on this time around.
The scrum was a particular source of heartache for the Brumbies and the visitors are certainly bracing themselves for another ferocious scrum onslaught on Saturday.
“The scrum is going to be huge, especially in finals footy, because when there’s a lot of pressure mistakes are capitalised on,” Alexander said.
“The Stormers scrum has been the best in the competition. We played well when we were here last time, but we didn’t scrum well and that was the difference between winning and losing the match.
“We took a lot out of that match, what we did well and what we didn’t do well.”
The Brumbies like to have go at the breakdown and test the referee early on by bending the laws a little bit. They are a streetwise team, but they also get penalised a lot in that area.
While the Stormers have conceded the least amount of penalties in Super Rugby in 2015, the Brumbies have conceded 32 more penalties than the Cape side.
The Brumbies found themselves on the wrong side of a 195 penalty count at Newlands earlier this year, while last weekend, in their defeat against the Crusaders, the Brumbies conceded the second most penalties of all the teams that played in the final round of league matches.
“We spoke about it last week against the Crusaders, the discipline issues. More often than not penalties determine the outcome in finals footy,” Alexander said. “The refs have been decisive and their communication with us has been good. But we have a lot to work on.”
One area of the game where the Brumbies will have the upper hand is their lineout and mauling.
“We have been working hard on our maul all year and it has gone well a few times,” he said.
“We like to take a pretty balanced approach and figure out what’s been working. If the maul worked early in the game, we sort of stuck to it. It’s not so much a plan going into the game, it’s about how the game unfolds.”