Aisle be Back: Super Rugby semis sans Hurricanes and vale Stu Wilson

The Hurricanes flag won’t be fluttering for another several months. 

• By Kevin McCarthy

I am not quite ready to go there, and look at another truncated Hurricanes playoff campaign, this time – or is it every time – dying on the cold fields of Canberra.

Disappointing of course, but if you cannot stop the Brumbies mauling game, when you know it is coming, then it’s going to be a long match.

On to the semis then, and surely the Brumbies will cop the lash from the Chiefs, who opened the door for the Blues just wide enough last weekend.

And if you want to bet against the Crusaders at home, then make the TAB’s day. Having wrongly dumped on the Aucklanders last week, I am doubling down and dumping on them again.

If I’m right then, it’s the Chiefs travelling to Christchurch for the final.

If I’m wrong, it will be ACT hosting the Blues in Canberra, not a ratings winner.

+++++++++++

Fantastic to see a Hurricanes favourite is heading for Moana Pasifika next Super season – welcome back Ngani Laumape!

You’ll remember him well – like an extremely tough pinball, ricocheting away from tacklers.

Or in the memorable 31-all draw at the stadium against the 2017 British and Irish Lions – stopping on a dime so that the cover tackling Lions back found himself the pinball, spun off into in-goal.

If you’ve read this column for a while, you’ll know I could not fathom how Steve Hansen overlooked Laumape for the world cup in 2019.

When a somewhat toothless side went down with a whimper against England, you just wonder what Laumape could have done.

Still, he went away and lived his best rugby life, and now we get to see him back again. Yet another reason to make Moana your second team.

+++++++++++++++++++

How many times did a defender think they had Stu Wilson sized up, only to find he had gone. Now, sadly, he truly has gone, at the age of 70.

Looking at the highlights reel, two tries I did not need reminding of.

One is the 1977 score at Park Du Prince. France had monstered the All Blacks a week earlier – so Jack Gleeson’s side decided to run them off their feet.

I had gotten up at 3 in the morning to watch it all in colour on grand-dads Phillips K9.

Not to disappoint, there’s Bruce Robertson setting off alarm bells in the French midfield, before Wilson took his pass on the cutback, and blitzed to the line. It seemed to sum up a much more exciting style of rugby.

Then there is the one scored in vastly different conditions at Lancaster Park, 1981. Helicopters whirring overhead, barbed wire screening off the dead ball area, and there’s Wilson, again stepping through the mud as if its not there, to score.

Truly a great, at test and provincial level, and a trailblazer as a modern Al Black, as quick with a quip as an intercept.

How strange that he and Bernie Fraser were pilloried for taking the money from their Ebony and Ivory book. Like they say, sometimes the past is a foreign country.