Aisle be Back: The Super Rugby Final

Hurricanes fans celebrate their team – maybe next year for success! 

• By Kevin McCarthy 

We have reached what I would call the Facebook stage of the season.

What this means for a Hurricanes fan, as in just about every season I can remember, consists of watching other teams – well the Crusaders and the Chiefs – having their very best lives on Facebook or whatever social media platform you choose.

Of course, as social media is implicitly evil, you may well find it showing up a memory from seven years ago when the Canes actually did win a title and enjoy their very best rugby life.

Oh well it is what it is, and we do have the prospect of the very best two teams going head to head in the final of Super Rugby Pacific on Saturday night in the Tron.

I guess the wise man and woman would have predicted that right from the very start – when the Chiefs toppled the Crusaders away in Christchurch in the very first round – that these teams would meet again and so it comes to pass.

I don’t know where your money is but there are lots of side stories going on.  Scott Robertson in this final season as coach for the Crusaders, Richie Mo’unga off to Japan, so his final game – and  again,  Sam Whitelock in his final game if he manages to get on the field.

That’s the motivation for the southerners and of course just that absolute ruthlessness in seeking yet another title

On the other side,  sit the Chiefs, and they are by no means imposters in this whole scenario as we all know.

Their motivation of course is to not let this pretty stellar season go to waste. They topped the table during regular season and now will want to bring the trophy to Hamilton.

I know that he should say that the Crusaders may sneak this one again; they’re well used to playing away and still winning titles.

But it may be a bit of a cauldron in Hamilton on Saturday night. Clayton McMillan of course has been urging people in the 25,000 sold out crowd to bring the cowbells. We all know what a cacophony that will be.

It should be an absolute belter again. The Chiefs seem to have a capacity to wear a lot of punishment and dish it out as well – while the Saders we know will take their opportunities ruthlessly and also defend very staunchly.

It all may come down as always to what the first-fives can do with the quality of ball that they get. You probably wouldn’t have written a couple of years ago that Damien McKenzie would be playing at first-five  as his preferred position. Now we will get another chance to see how DMac performs at the very, very pointy end.

And you can safely expect that Shaun Stevenson will play the house down. He still seems to be the major talking point of the All Black  squad this week – Stevenson is number 37 in a 36-strong squad i.e., injury cover.

I still think he’s going to be on the plane to France given that we’ve got a few more games to go and a few more injuries to reveal themselves  before then.

++++++

Great to have confirmation that W X V is coming to New Zealand later this year. I thought for a moment that W X  V might be the latest sports use or misuse of Roman numerals and went looking for what W was in Latin numeracy. Well, as I am sure you know, it isn’t – although M is there, standing for a thousand, so if you flip a W you get an M.

That’s a long way to saying could we just have a simpler title for the event?  The event being effectively the top six women’s teams playing in two pools, but not playing within those said pools.  There will be no semi or final after that and its done and dusted in three weekends.  It took me a while to work that out, as the original publicity was scant on “how does this work” and other annoying information that fans might want.

Strictly this is W X V 1 (or should that be W X V I) as there are two other tiers, W X V  2 and W X V 3 at the same time.

What I can confirm, there is top level women’s rugby coming again to our shores. Yes, it will clash with that event over in France, but hey, we all might need some welcome distraction by that time.