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After comprehensive semi-final wins to the Hurricanes and Lions, the stars have aligned above Wellington and Chris Boyd’s side is only days away from finishing off what they couldn’t last year – complete a full house of New Zealand Super Rugby champions.
Read more:
» AFL talking points from Round 19
» NRL talking points from the weekend
Two moments from their match against the Chiefs encapsulated the essence of their game.
Firstly, a turnover in the sixth minute that saw replacement hooker Ricky Riccitelli slide down to gather and then release Beauden Barrett on the counter attack.
It is moments like these that win finals matches – sure, Barrett was genius enough to place a deft kick ahead into space, re-gather, speed another fifty metres then, once tackled, offload superbly to Willis Haloholo for the try.
Then again, that’s what’s expected of Barrett these days.
Riccitelli would have been excused for bracing himself for contact, setting up a defensive ruck and buying time for TJ Perenara to clear.
His action wasn’t flukey or high risk but simply Hurricane’s rugby; clear intent to use turnover ball, with the confidence and skills to match.
Later, with the game entering the final quarter, and the Chiefs still within striking distance, a wrap around move on the right took them close – that is until Ardie Savea somehow latched onto a ball that was barely available and body twisted up and around by the impact of other arriving players, spirited it back onto the Hurricanes side.
Savea’s match stats read 16 tackles made, none missed, three turnovers and one dummy kick. As for his personal battle against All Black rival Sam Cane? A comprehensive win by TKO. He even joked afterwards that his mum and dad might give him a slap around the ears for lairizing.
Somehow I doubt it.
Savea’s defensive will, his attacking punch and sheer energy are integral to what makes up this Hurricanes side. Riccitelli proved they could overcome the loss of their captain and they have a perfectly good back-up option at flyhalf should Barrett go down.
But Savea is the 2016 Hurricanes. He is irreplaceable. Jaco Kriel looms as one hell of a challenge in the final, but you get the feeling that Savea will shrug his shoulders, smile and take it all in his stride.
Not far behind him was his bad hair buddy, the ‘Tongan Bear’, Loni Uhila. In this year’s TV series “Pre-season with the Hurricanes”, budding boxer Uhila stood out as an ‘x-factor’ personality, much loved within the team.
Now that he has been provided with regular game time he is showing that he is far from a novelty act – his impact and energy impressive and infectious.
For much of the season the Chiefs appealed as the best side and on their day able to blow any side right off the park. But they are one of those sides that always seems more likely to score from 60 metres out than from concerted pressure.
Despite a set-piece which has gradually improved over the season, and which was verging on dominant against the Hurricanes, they lack a precise, clinical finishing edge – surprising in a side which boasts Dave Rennie, Aaron Cruden and Cane in its leadership tier.
To be fair, they weren’t done any favours by referee Angus Gardner, who may have felt that a 13-5 penalty count in the Chief’s favour was fair reflection, but whose two warnings to Victor Vito for collapsing defensive mauls was one too many.
Gardner is a good referee who, in his desperation not to make the result come down to a decision of his, ended up doing himself and the game no favour, by bottling it and keeping his cards in his pocket for far too long.
In Johannesburg, Jaco Peyper by contrast was relaxed, so much so that he forgot about the forward pass rule, at least a dozen times.
It doesn’t really matter who referees the Lions because they simply get on with playing rugby the way they want to play it which, by any account, is highly impressive and – if important people want it to be – instructive for South African rugby.
Like the Chiefs, the Lions are dangerous because they throw convention out the window; they do anything they want to do, from wherever they like on the field, whenever they decide to do it.
But, unlike the Chiefs, they are far more clinical about it, never compromising their set piece, commitment to the collision, or competition for turnover ball.
One play approaching halftime, in the aftermath of Elliot Dixon somehow spilling the ball in the act of scoring demonstrates their confidence and determination to play the game on their terms.
Right winger Ruan Combrinck is the Lion’s ‘go to’ man for exiting their 22, yet with a defensive 5 metre scrum on the left side of the field one would be excused thinking he was out of the action for the next minute or so.
Not so this Lions side, who calmly moved the ball across the field – behind their goalposts if you don’t mind – until they found Combrinck on his right wing, who duly thumped a clearing kick down towards halfway.
This was play stunning in its simplicity and audacity, and so typical of this Lions side.
Dixon’s miss was inexplicable, although the final ball from Malakai Fekitoa was one of the forward passes Peyper seemed oblivious to. One suspects that Dixon is actually more embarrassed by his second half hand-off to Kriel, on the left touchline, his ineffectual jersey grab gifting the Lion’s star flanker a try.
Dixon has enjoyed an outstanding season, but will know both of these efforts are well below what is required from an All Black No. 6.
Elton Jantjies has always appealed as a prodigiously talented footballer, if tending to the flakey or brittle side where consideration for higher honours is taken into account. But no longer.
To a large extent mirroring Barrett, this is Jantjies’ break-out season, his kicking, passing, running and game management altogether too much for the Highlanders.
Any budding young Australian flyhalves who have tuned out of Super Rugby already, will have missed a valuable lesson – Jantjies taking the ball flat, at pace, putting the opposition under pressure, not transferring pressure to his outside backs.
After watching the Crusaders fall off 23 tackles last week, the expectation was that the Highlanders would offer far more starch in defence – they were worse though with a total of 33 missed – enough to lose two matches.
That’s where their game started and ended, despite Ben Smith and Waisake Naholo showing their class throughout. Losing by four tries to five sounds close, but really, this does the Lions a disservice.
Many fans were quick to point to the demands of travel, and nobody can deny that the Highlanders haven’t been on a head-spinning road trip over the last five weeks.
But if it’s a factor, then it’s merely that. What is the alternative? Take the effects of travel out of the equation altogether and have the Highlanders and Crusaders face off every week?
Super Rugby is a competition where matches are played in a number of distant and divergent countries; South Africa, Argentina, Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and Invercargill.
No doubt travel demands can and should be made more equitable, and the conference system modified to assist.
The nature of the competition though dictates travel is part of the contract, and if it’s good enough for coaches and players to get on with it and not make excuses, then it’s surely good enough for everyone else to do likewise.
Travel is certainly a predictor for finals success, and the Lions will be reminded many times this week that only one Super Rugby title has been won by a side travelling from overseas – the Crusaders winning in Canberra in 2000.
They will also hear how no New Zealand side has ever lost a play-off match at home to a side visiting from South Africa or Australia.
If this sounds like ‘advantage Hurricanes’ it most certainly is, but it’s nothing less than what both the Hurricanes and Lions deserve.
Coach Johan Ackermann, who should be reminded that the ‘high five’ was invented by and for dudes far cooler than he, made this bed all by himself, gifting away home advantage in some kind of misguided gamble.
Perhaps he expected the Chiefs to beat the Hurricanes, but he should now be disappointed with himself that he didn’t trust some of his players to travel to Buenos Aries and then beat the Sharks at home in the first week of finals.
If this final was in Johannesburg, no matter the merits of this fine Hurricane’s side, the Lions would be firm favourite to win.
It is Ackermann however, who has decreed that the final is in Wellington, and in doing so, made his task vastly harder.
If the Lions win Ackermann will be redeemed, hailed as knowing his side better than all of the armchair experts.
If the Hurricanes win though, Ackermann will have learnt the hard way not to mess with history.