The ACT Brumbies and Hamilton-based Chiefs have emerged clearly as the best teams in Australia and New Zealand after the weekend’s fifth round of Super Rugby Pacific.
The Brumbies are the only unbeaten team in the tournament after a showdown Friday with the previously unbeaten Reds in which they avenged their loss to the Brisbane-based team in last year’s final of Super Rugby Australia.
The Chiefs stitched together a patchwork team after losing 17 players including six All Blacks to illness or injury and were still able to beat Moana Pasifika 59-12 in the only match played in New Zealand in round five.
The Christchurch-based Crusaders, Dunedin-based Highlanders and Auckland-based Blues all are contending with outbreaks of COVID-19 among their squads and weren’t able to train or assemble competitive teams for weekend matches.
Only the Chiefs stepped up and, digging deep into their playing resources to come up with barely 23 players to take on Moana Pasifika in a previously postponed match.
Their win left them with three wins and a loss after four games and placed them fifth on the overall table and second in New Zealand behind the Crusaders. But the Chiefs’ win over the Crusaders last weekend marks them as the better team and their display of youthful talent on Saturday was a further indication they are the strongest team in the New Zealand section.
“As a coach you sell the dream to the players around we’ve had a bit of disruption but we’ve got to rise above that and we back our squad,” head coach Cameron McMillan said. “We wholeheartedly believe that.
“But we definitely had some challenges and right up until about Thursday the game could quite easily have been canceled or given to another team.
“We were really committed to wanting to play because we felt like we had the numbers. We were comfortable we had enough depth in the critical positions, except halfback where we rolled the dice a little bit.”
The Chiefs now face the Crusders for a second time next weekend, still with uncertainty over the availability of players but with strengthened confidence that it will cope.
“We’re not naïve enough to think we’re past our Covid challenge,” McMillan said. “It pays not to get too far ahead of yourself and you just roll up on Monday, see who’s available and work from there.”
The Brumbies were determined to exact some revenge after their injury-time loss to the Reds in last year’s domestic final. They were outscored two tries to one by the Reds on Friday but held onto the lead throughout the second half, sealing their winning margin with a penalty to replacement scrumhalf Ryan Lonergan in the 66th minute.
The Reds had opportunities to snatch the win away, notably when captain Fraser McReight chased his own kick towards the Brumbies goalline and was thwarted when the ball hit the post. McReight might have been held back early in the kick-chase but the referee signaled play on.
“I know everyone else would be thinking ‘oh God, here we go again’,” Brumbies coach Dan McKellar aid. “I wasn’t thinking about that. If we had have lost, we would have beaten ourselves, that’s what I was thinking.”
“I don’t want to sit here and be like the wet mop because I hate people being negative about the game. What were the good things? The scrum. There were some really good parts to our defense, we’re having to do a lot of defending but we’re having to do a lot of defending because we can’t maintain possession and we’re inaccurate and not as clinical in areas of the game as we normally are.” MDT/AP
