The table-topping Hurricanes made short work of the Blues at Eden Park on Saturday night, stepping out to a 29-5 win and not needing all their front liners to do it.

Centre Conrad Smith was rested, wing Cory Jane was a late withdrawal, and unfortunately the on-fire Paul Broadhurst needed a break from locking duties in the exact same filthy wet conditions to which All Black selectors should have been paying the closest attention.

The win was surprisingly easy. Needing only to focus on a couple of genuine attacking threats, blindside flanker Akira Ioane and second five George Moala, the Hurricanes shut down the Blues’ offence and backed their own handling to play dry-ball rugby in wet weather.

The Blues’ defence has, if anything, gotten worse over the season. A pick-and-go from Hurricanes prop Chris Eves past two tacklers and under two more got the first try.

Then defenders were streaming en masse to the blindside of a goal-line ruck when halfback TJ Perenara ran over unopposed from the base on the open side. Next, hooker Dane Coles backed himself ten yards out and carried three tacklers with him over the line. He’s no slouch, but still.

The adventurous ball skills of the Hurricanes turned micro opportunities at the gain line first into a yard here or there, then into open breaks later in the phase count. Too often the Blues were still scrambling as decisive blows were struck.

Not many teams would have stopped Nehe Milner-Skudder’s try for the bonus point though. Lock Mark Abbott picked up and surged forward, hugging the fringe as he set the blind side alarm bells ringing. Drawing a tackler, he unloaded to young Manawatu first five Otere Black, starting in his first match for the Hurricanes but playing like a veteran (more often than not it was he who had stopped the usually devastating Moala).

Black slipped past his marker with a clever delay before hitting Smith’s stand-in Ray Lee-Lo with a flat pass, and the centre could see just enough daylight between converging tacklers to free his arms. Milner-Skudder’s timing had to be perfect to hit Lee-Lo’s offload and make the corner, and the converted winger still had to ground the ball with one hand while in mid-air over the sideline, but the bonus point was never in doubt… not with the Hurricanes’ mojo somewhere between habanero and potassium right now.

It made me happy for the long-suffering Hurricanes supporters, a very faithful crowd to whom Eden Park wins are second only to victories in Christchurch for malicious glee.

I’m a diehard Crusader fan and I know exactly what central New Zealanders think of those wearing red and black in autumn… never mind our shit doesn’t stink, our corpses won’t decompose… but I’d hope there wasn’t too much schadenfreude in the capital after what happened next in Sydney.

Watching the Crusaders go down 22-32 to the Waratahs left me personally with an empty feeling. They hadn’t played well enough at any point in the season to justify expectations of a second half miracle, and the catastrophic fumbles of the first 40 minutes which put them so far behind had been no reassurance.

As the echoes of my strangled first half curses faded and a second half fightback began I could still hear my tired old heart sucking the last drops of juice from a shrivelled adrenal gland, but each one was absorbed in a cancerous sponge of fused dread and foreboding.

Doom stood behind me, slowly shaking his head at the last sputters of my dying hope. Even outrage over some of the season’s worst officiating and off-the-ball niggle failed to morph from righteous indignation into the usual bloodymindedness, because the Crusaders did this to themselves.

Normally giants stiff-arming Dan Carter or putting kidney shots on Richie McCaw and Sam Whitelock would have sparked a murderous fury of vigilante revision. Normally giving away scrum penalties to chubby rookies would have had me throwing furniture around the War Room.

But every swinging arm and bellyflop just confirmed what’s been obvious all year, that the resolute Crusaders of old who wouldn’t let such newsouthwelshness bother them have been reshuffled and blinded with theory to the point of emasculation by the current selectors.

Homebush is a battlefield already thick with the dead. New Zealanders have the odd fond memory of the place but mostly horrid recollections come to mind. With a few intercepts, high tackles and well-chosen words, men with names like medieval wizards and death row inmates have given me the permanent heeby-jeebies about the place. The scariest ghosts are the bald ones, squinty and Zambian, and the dark stains can never be washed out. Every new dropped pass or lineout overthrow is another rip in the cosmic curtain for Australians to pour through.

Now we can add it being where the 2015 Crusade finally stalled to its list of dubious distinctions. An early try to wing Nemani Nadolo was forgotten in the flood of cheap points given away immediately afterwards, the first points being five that Nadolo was guilty of conceding when he rushed out of the line and let his opposite Taqele Naiyanavoro stroll in.

First five Colin Slade dropped a pass which the other wing Rob Horne raced away with for another try, then Naiyavoro got his second when more than enough blindside defenders got themselves in a tangle.

Slade limped off, allowing Carter to take the helm, and things improved somewhat but McCaw’s try after a scissors with Carter and Nadolo still came from a fumble, and a lineout drive which the other flanker Matt Todd finished off followed a series of throwing errors that saw many opportunities spurned. When McCaw was carded and Waratahs first five Bernard Foley came up with the fluky bounce from a nothing kick to race away for the deal-sealer, I was already resigned to the fact that the Crusaders wouldn’t be playing knockout for the first time since 2001.

The Chiefs will be there if Friday’s performance against the Bulls in Rotorua is anything to go by. Down two tries, the first to midfielder Jan Serfontein after a hospital pass led to a goal-line scramble and the second a gift to wing Bjorn Basson after a bit of crazy in-goal volleyball from wing Bryce Heem, the Chiefs upped the pace and ran away with it 34-20.

Quick recycling and accurate-albeit-sometimes-fingertip handling put them in strike position repeatedly, letting Liam Messam drive over to begin the rally with a classic blindside flanker’s leg drive, and allowing Heem to make up for his earlier error by getting on the end of a series of passes around the exhausted Bulls defence and tying the scores at half time.

The freestyle assault on the defensive line continued after the break, with forwards and backs combining to create holes and the tempo proving too much for the men from the high veldt. With so many second rowers on the injury list, those Chiefs most deserving of praise in the high octane offensive plan were locks Ross Filipo and Johan Bardoul…

Filipo brought out of retirement and Bardoul a converted loosie… who were marking either bigger or far more experienced men but slotted into the Chiefs’ sometimes frantic pattern seamlessly.

Their workrate in the engine room was crucial to maintaining momentum in the long sequence of attacking green lights. When halfback Augustine Pulu twice scooted around rucks to score, after the locks had been instrumental in putting the Bulls’ heels on their line, they were among the most conspicuous in the try celebrations.

A Bulls lineout drive closed the gap briefly, replacement flanker Arno Botha getting the try, and it showed not only that all teams are vulnerable to a bit of old-fashioned grunt up front if well-managed, but also that the Bulls were hardly easy-beats.

The Chiefs had been looking to avoid exactly this sort of rumbling barrage, and had worked hard to make their strategy work against some pretty good tacklers. The needed to refocus one last time but when they did it was to produce a try the Rotorua crowd will remember for a while.

Number eight Mike Leitch drew two tacklers on a tight blind side and then sky-hooked his pass over them, fearlessly exposing his ribs to defenders who’d been dying all game to get their hands on the elusive chap.

First five Damian McKenzie took the pass and sucked the widest man towards the touchline, then flipped the ball behind his back to replacement fullback Tim Nanai-Williams, the most slippery runner with the freshest legs on the park.

The damage was already done when the yawning gap was manufactured. No one was fooled by Nanai-Williams’ shimmy in trying to go over untouched, but he’d already got within a couple of yards of the line and was able to drag the last tackler with him.

With this loss the Bulls were overtaken not only by the Stormers, who beat the Rebels 31-15 at Newlands, but also by the Lions who put the Cheetahs away 40-17 in Bloemfontein. The Chiefs retained fourth place overall, with second-most points, and their most pressing headache right now is in finding enough first class locks.

The news came after the game that Bardoul’s season is over. He played on after a first half knee injury, not wanting to spurn the opportunity for game time but inflaming the joint he should have gotten some ice onto quick-smart.

The Highlanders stayed fifth, with third-most points, by thrashing the Force 23-3 in Perth. There wasn’t much to report here apart from the usual brilliance of the Smiths, fullback Ben and halfback Aaron, the impressive cohesion of the backline they bookend, and the continuing inspiration of a forward pack full of nobodies they play behind.

Also, it’s hard to gauge the merits of the win with the Force so abjectly disorganised right now, and prone to such howling errors of judgement as kicking deep to Ben Smith without bothering to chase.

He doesn’t need an extra yard of run-up to be the world’s best tackle evader, or an extra second to look around and spot the acres of space begging for a wiper’s kick. He can jink without slowing, still retaining an extra cog to accelerate without warning, and in Perth he left his usual travel diary of twisted bodies behind him.

The length of Aaron Smith’s pass gave his five-eighths and three-quarters enough space to make good decisions, and keeping the ball in front of their forwards was usually first choice. Their work up front was dynamic and well-drilled, so Smith had an armchair ride behind his pack who were hunting as one and wearing the Force down with unshowy, eight-man unity.

Flanker John Hardie’s try from a driving maul was a good example, the result so inevitable and obvious that some backs couldn’t help themselves joining in to try and steal the credit.

An especially good decision came when Lima Sopoaga nailed a mid-length droppie, showing that New Zealand tens aren’t ALL scornful of this oh-so-sensible option, and especially sensible when it gives your pack a well-earned breather after one of the world’s most punishing plane rides against the grain.

The cake was iced when another poorly directed kick got rehoisted by wing Pat Osborne and chased by Sopoaga’s replacement Marty Banks. Never taking his eyes off the ball except for an instant to pick his launch spot, he leapt high and caught it, then netball-passed to wing Richard Buckman who was following up, running a wide line and anticipating that exact scenario. Estimating that his line to the corner was being shut down, Buckman cut back infield to take the tackle and found Aaron Smith calling his name.

A high percentage of the crowd were transplanted Highlander supporters, and this was exactly the sort of end-to-end stuff they’d hoped for when buying their tickets and leaving their Honey Badger wigs at home for once. I have a good friend in Fremantle, a Ravensbourne boy who openly admits to becoming a true blue Westie like everyone else who moves to that most far-flung of rugby’s outposts. I sure hope he was there and that Smith kissing the ball before dotting down brought a nostalgic tear to his eye.

Earlier in the weekend there had been a few sunburnt austrokiwis in Brisbane watching the Reds go down in yet another screaming heap, 14-21 to the Sharks, not helped by a half-time argument in the sheds between itinerant troublemaker James O’Connor and ex-Highlander Adam Thomson.

Rugby-starved expats at Suncorp notwithstanding, it seems outsiders aren’t so easily assimilated in Queensland where New Zealanders are still openly referred to as bludgers. The one point for the loss was enough to keep the Reds a place above the Force at the bottom of the table.

Despite the falling away of the Crusaders (31) the top of the table is still congested with New Zealand sides. The Hurricanes (57) are now unassailably top qualifiers barring some galactically improbable series of results in the final three weeks, while the Chiefs (44) and Highlanders (43) are the top two wild cards with at least two points more/the same number of wins/a better points differential than the Australian and South African conference leading Waratahs (41) and Stormers (38).

We’ll soon see if the Waratahs’ questionable discipline earns them the same leniency from South African touch judges, or if their off-the-ball tactics work against South Africans at altitude. They play the Lions next week at Ellis Park in that team’s final home game of the season. The importance of the result will outweigh any need to provide a spectacle, so expect fireworks and controversy to accompany a low score ascending in threes.

In Invercargill, where the Highlanders and Chiefs meet in a battle for fourth place, expect an epic. And in Nelson, where the Crusaders host the Hurricanes, expect more injuries to All Blacks in two teams with nothing to lose.