Aisle be Back: Hurricanes v Highlanders

Riley Higgins and Billy Proctor return to the Hurricanes’ midfield for their match against the Highlanders. Photo: Caroline Lewis.

• By Kevin McCarthy

Two weeks is a long time in Super Rugby Pacific.

A fortnight ago, I made the usual shonky predictions that basically wrote off the Hurricanes chances of defeating the Chiefs despite home advantage.

That was despite wrongly earlier writing of the Canes chances of defeating the Brumbies in Canberra.

But lo, neither was correct –  and with a slashing second 40 against the Chiefs, the Hurricanes come out of bye week set fair, with plenty of momentum for the last three rounds. Even Brett Cameron has done a Lazarus to join the fun.

Apologies to the Highlanders who have put up another gallant season of working with much less of a talent buffer than other sides, but they are there for the taking tonight in Wellington. And maybe the bonus point.

Also, this weekend, the Reds travel to play the Brumbies. Can’t pick that one, but if the Brumbies prevail, then the Hurricanes could have a shot at stealing into fourth place if the following week they can then beat the Reds in Brisbane.

There are similar computations hanging on most of the matches this weekend – with Moana hosting the Blues the most loaded.

Heading into the 16^th and final round, it’s likely eight teams out of 11 will still be living in hope of getting into the playoffs – or improving their relative placings in the top six. That’s pretty good for keeping interest in the comp until the very end.

How big a deal will it be that the Crusaders have had injuries to Scott Barrett and Will Jordan. Damaging but not fatal; They will still be good enough to roll over the Waratahs, and the Highlanders to follow.

Touching on the final run-in again, the role of bonus points is worth scrutiny.  The closer we get to the end, I suspect the rarer they become.

Which segues me to an article in The Guardian’s rugby pages  this week that suggested (after some decent number crunching) that bonus points over 25 premiership seasons made very little difference to the league outcomes. The exact difference was they moved finishing places by just over 2 per cent.’

I believe they still have the BP for 4 tries, not the down under 3-try margin, but both share the 7 or less losing margin BP.

It would be interesting to see what a similar exercise would show here. The logical conclusion would be that BPs could be discarded with, the original English position.

Strip out BPs in the current SRP table, and there is some, but not huge movement. The Hurricanes for example jump over the Blues into fifth place.

It would however be wrong to tret the BPs as disposable. They definitely spice up the closing 10 or so minutes of many games as teams chase a losing point or defend a try margin.

Rare indeed is a game where the sides shut up shop and grind it out. Long live the BP.

The Hurricanes team to play the Highlanders is:

1 Xavier Numia
2 Asafo Aumua (Co Captain)
3 Pasilio Tosi
4 Zach Gallagher
5 Isaia Walker-Leawere
6 Brad Shields (Co Captain)
7 Peter Lakai
8 Brayden Iose
9 Cam Roigard
10 Ruben Love
11 Ngatungane Punivai
12 Riley Higgins
13 Billy Proctor (Co Captain)
14 Bailyn Sullivan
15 Callum Harkin

Impact  

16. Raymond Tuputupu
17. Pouri Rakete-Stones
18. Tevita Mafileo
19. Will Tucker
20. Du’Plessis Kirifi (Co Captain)
21. Ereatara Enari
22. Brett Cameron
23. Fatafehi Fineanganofo