Aisle be Back: Hurricanes v Crusaders tonight

The Hurricanes celebrate a try in last week’s win over the Blues. Tonight they play a down – but never out – Crusaders side in Christchurch in the fourth round of the Super Rugby competition. 

• By Kevin McCarthy

If not now, when.

The question for the Hurricanes, top of the table, as they head to Crusader country.

Or as sometimes its has been better known, here there be dragons.

While everyone wisely is nodding that the southern men can never be discounted, even from a horror three nil start to the season, then surely the Hurricanes will never have a better chance to raid the cookie jar.

There’s no Scott Barrett, to add to their injury woes, and a new rookie first five is being parachuted in (Riley Hohepa). And that in a team that clearly is struggling to find its feet anyway.

Against that, the worries that this is shaping up as the Crusaders’ last stand, if they want to get somewhere near the top four coming playoffs time.  Actually, teams with four losses have finished as high as second – after that the drop can be sharp, although in 2022 the Highlanders made eighth with an eye-watering 10 losses.

Even so, four losses from four will leave them having to be hot for the rest of the comp.  I am not sure however that Australian teams are going to be easy pickings so much this year, and all the New Zealand outfits, even the Highlanders, look competitive.

What mindset for the Hurricanes then, who last week turned in quite an accomplished across the board team performance? Grunt up front, guile out the back. Not much to be unhappy with, and indeed one of the most composed efforts in recent years.

Obviously, the worse idea would be to assume that will be repeated this weekend. The Hurricanes should treat this as if they are playing the Crusaders of old and set out to play the sort of rugby that eventually dismantled the Blues.

Ruthless and clinical, not words you’d associate with the Canes, but what will be needed. Complacency and hubris will give the Crusaders a sniff, and a drowning man, as they say, will grasp at anything.

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The Six Nations has been entertaining fare this year, with an atmosphere we can only look at enviously.

Quite what to make of England beating Ireland I don’t know. No team likes to better pump up their own tires than the Red Rose; they might as well have an oxygen tanker trailing them around post-match.

Still, a stronger England would be good for Ireland in particular, because it’s largely been streets ahead of the other sides – and on any given day, will continue to be so.

That’s because France still seems in the deepest of funks about being knocked out of their own World Cup at quarter final stage. That and missing Dupont, as he indulges a fling with sevens.  It seems a tad overdone.

I can’t think of any other country knocked out in a quarter which then went into a deep, introspective depression.

Or possibly I can. It’s not pretty is it, as we all know too well.