I’ve seen plenty of praise for the Hurricanes this season and the work of first-year head coach Clark Laidlaw.
Some of it’s been justified, given how little was expected of the team when the 2024 Super Rugby Pacific competition started.
On paper, the Hurricanes’ squad didn’t leap off the page as a title-contending one. Getting to a home semifinal, when looking at it through that lens, was meritorious.
Only, having got there, the Hurricanes were abysmal against the Chiefs and part of that reflects on the coach.
You have to earn the right to play in elite rugby. You have to attain a bit of physical ascendancy before throwing the ball around willy nilly.
The Hurricanes, to their discredit, did none of that against the Chiefs.
Despite twice having a numerical advantage, as well as the upper hand at scrum time, the Hurricanes were terribly lateral in attack.
If there was a pass to be pushed, they pushed it, regardless of whether it had any likelihood of falling safely into the arms of a teammate.
In going sideways and in showing little respect for possession, the Hurricanes also went away from their one true attacking threat – Asafo Aumua.
I thought it was dim all round from the home side, who had a legitimate opportunity to be Super Rugby champions this year.
Those don’t come around too often, as fans of pretty much everyone other than the Crusaders know all too well.
A good coach sees that Plan A (assuming the players are actually playing to a plan) isn’t working and changes it. If they’re not playing to a plan, then he insists that they do.
Either way, Laidlaw left things in the hands of players who continued to make poor decisions.
That’s not helped when your halfback – and emotional leader – loses their head.
I’ve written already this year that TJ Perenara ought to be one of the first players picked in Scott Robertson’s inaugural All Blacks squad.
TJ Perenara of the Hurricanes. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
Nothing I’ve seen since I wrote that a month or two ago has changed that opinion.
But there are occasions when Perenara becomes frenetic. When his will to win (and to settle various onfield scores) gets the better of him.
Times when, if he was less interested in chirping at the referee or assistant referees, he might notice that his attention should be on the actual game.
Saturday night at Sky Stadium was one of those times.
More broadly, I saw a bit of Ian Foster’s All Blacks about the Hurricanes.
I saw a determination to play expansively, to entertain and to play in the “right’’ way that’s incompatible with real high-performance rugby.
There’s been two great New Zealand provincial/franchise teams in my lifetime.
The Auckland/Blues teams of the 1980s and early Super Rugby era and the Crusaders.
Neither played a lot of footy.
They were happy to let you play and back their defence and set pieces to pummel you into submission. They kicked goals well, were good on the counter and often won games in the last 10 to 15 minutes.
Opposition teams felt they were in the contest, maybe even dominating to a degree. But they turned around at fulltime to see they’d somehow lost by 20 points.
All Black teams of yore built off that Auckland/Blues blueprint. They were accurate and ruthlessly efficient.
Robertson’s Crusaders teams weren’t dissimilar. They’d happily give you the ball and invite you to do your best.
And, once you’d run out of ideas, heart or the ability to control possession, they punished you.
I never quite understood why Foster’s All Blacks weren’t able to replicate that and why Richie Mo’unga often resembled a bloke on Test debut, rather than someone who was a fixture in the side.
Maybe the All Blacks’ forward pack simply wasn’t able to assert itself the way those Auckland, Blues and Crusaders teams did.
Whatever the case, the Hurricanes reminded us of what not to do in games of consequence.
I’m assuming (and hoping) that Robertson knows this and will pick the type of players who actually win you big games, rather than athletes that look a million bucks in a rout.
It’s substance that wins franchise finals and Test matches, not style. The Hurricanes showed no appreciation for that and All Blacks teams of recent vintage haven’t either.
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As good as the Chiefs were on Saturday – and, boy, do I hope they can now win the final – the Hurricanes have to know that they did it to themselves.
That it was their errors, their lack of accuracy, their insistence upon going sideways rather than forward, that cost them victory in the semifinal.
I don’t say that to humiliate or criticise them. I say it because I’m tired of watching the All Blacks do it too.