No Aussie team has beaten every Kiwi side in a Super season. The Brumbies can do it on Saturday
The Brumbies will rely on the hard lessons they learned from recent wins in New Zealand as they look to complete an unprecedented ‘Kiwi sweep’ with victory over the Hurricanes in Christchurch on Saturday.
The Brumbies, who have beaten four of New Zealand’s five teams so far this year, could make history if they can beat the Canes and make it a group full of trans-Tasman wins in a single season.
The Reds are the only team to do something similar, with four wins out of four against their Kiwi rivals in 2013. However, due to the conference system at the time, they were unable to play all five New Zealand teams and eventually lost to the Crusaders in the play-offs.
Even the four Australian teams that won the super championship (Brumbies 2001 and 2004, Reds 2011 and Waratahs 2014) lost at least one regular season match to the New Zealand team.
But in an uneven season in which the Brumbies uncharacteristically lost several games at home, the ACT men have consistently excelled against Kiwi teams both home and away.
The Brumbies broke a 26-year drought, beating the Crusaders in the second round in Christchurch and defeating the Highlanders in the ninth round in Dunedin. Both wins held important lessons for the Brumbies as they try to beat the in-form Canes.
The Brumbies, like all teams in the Super Round, were unable to train at One NZ Stadium on Friday and will only experience the field on Saturday afternoon when they sell out in front of a sold-out crowd of 25,000. But manager Steve Larkham said the players had supposedly acclimated after beating the Highlanders on their roofed pitch in Dunedin at Forsyth Barr Stadium a fortnight ago.
“It’s going to be a great atmosphere inside the stadium,” Larkham said. “The stands are quite vertical so all that noise will echo around the pitch and create a really good atmosphere for the players, which is something we haven’t seen in Super Rugby for a while.
“We felt that in Dunedin as well. We didn’t have enough capacity in Dunedin, but during the warm-up, even though the crowd wasn’t fully in the stadium, it was really hard to hear. Then the boys talked about it after the game as well, in terms of that communication factor.”
“So we talked about that in terms of some of our calls this week… making more physical calls on the field to make sure players can identify the space and the options.”
The win against the Crusaders took place at a different venue in Christchurch, the Apollo Projects Stadium, but the Brumbies have stuck to a similar schedule and are staying in the same hotel. They held their captaincy race in front of curious spectators at a public park across the road on Friday. A car passed and passengers, mistaking them for NSW, shouted “Waratahs suck”, preaching to the converted.
But the essence of the Brumbies’ win over the Crusaders will be the lesson they will try to carry into the Canes’ campaign. The Australian side pressed the Crusaders with a game plan based around keeping the ball and playing straightforward rugby, preventing turnovers that the defending champions love to turn into attacks.
The Brumbies were not as disciplined in their shock defeat to Fijian Drua in Canberra last weekend as they gave up 24 turnovers with a wider mentality.
“It just killed our continuity in the game,” Larkham said. “We know we will be a very dangerous team if we can recycle the ball, but it will be urgent to get to the breakdown this weekend.
“We’ve talked about the fact that we’ve beaten other New Zealand teams and that could be a pretty nice milestone for us. “We’ve had success traveling to New Zealand over the last couple of years and that would be all New Zealand teams in a year.
“We haven’t put too much emphasis on it, but we know it’s something we can celebrate after the game.”
The Brumbies sit fourth in the table, six points behind the top two teams, the Canes and Chiefs. Beating the Canes, who they beat in the play-off match in Canberra last year, is important if they have any hope of hosting the final this season.
The fifth-placed Reds will play the Brumbies and the Blues in the Super Round on Saturday. The Reds, who beat the Crusaders in Brisbane last weekend and beat the Highlanders at home in the third round, are also in good form against New Zealand teams.
Iain Payten is senior sports reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect with: X or email.
