Barrett boot secures Hurricanes win

The Hurricanes stayed in touch with the New Zealand conference-leading Chiefs, following a 25-15 win over the Rebels on Friday.

The Rebels outscored the Hurricanes by two tries to one in the Melbourne arm-wrestle, but six Beauden Barrett penalties sealed the four valuable away points for the visitors.

It moves the Hurricanes back into the top six with 30 points – five behind the defending-champion Chiefs.

The match was tighter than the scoreline indicated, but that will bring little joy to the Rebels – who have had a run of tight losses.

The Hurricanes have the best attacking record in the competition. However, the Rebels' much-improved defence held them tryless until the 57th minute.

Then Barrett showed off his array of skills when he spotted wing Cory Jane unmarked and put a perfectly-weighted kick across field.

Jane was able to get a pass away to skipper Conrad Smith and, with Barrett adding the extras, the Hurricanes were out to a match-winning 25-10 lead.

Barrett kicked penalties in the third, 11th and 17th minutes, as the visitors took a 9-0 lead – before Wellington-born fullback opened the Rebels' account with a penalty in the 20th minute.

The Rebels claimed the lead just short of the half-hour mark, when flyhalf Bryce Hegarty combined with Woodward down the wing and got the bounce to score under the posts. Woodward added the conversion – 10-9.

Handling errors let down the Hurricanes, but Barrett kicked a perfect four-from-four to squeeze the Canes back into the lead.

Woodward wasn't as efficient with the boot, converting just one of his three penalty attempts, which included an optimistic effort from 55 metres out on the half-time hooter.

Barrett added another three points, before missing his following two efforts as the Rebels continued to give away penalties.

The Hurricanes finally opened the scoring as the hour mark closed in – through Smith. The captain finished off a sensational counter-attacking try started by Andre Taylor.

Smith found himself sitting in the bin as the Hurricanes gave away a streak of penalties in their own half and former Hurricane Tamati Ellison spun over to close the gap to 10.

However, the Hurricanes shut up shop and hung on to deny the home team even a losing bonus point.

The loss leaves the Rebels with three wins for the season and captain Scott Higginbotham was left ruing his side's poor discipline.

"Penalties are killing us at the moment," he said.

"We're confident with our defence and I think our attack was a lot better than last week and, when we got in their tryline zone, we really pushed forward.

"It's unlucky but we'll keep working on it."

Man of the match: Scott Higginbotham and Cadeyrn Neville were again the Rebels' most productive players. Conrad Smith was certainly in the running till he got himself yellow-carded – although some Hurricanes fans would call that a badge of honour. Our award goes to Hurricanes No.8 Victor Vito, who is beginning to replicate the form that first made him an All Black – including producing a couple of crucial turnovers.

The scorers:

For the Rebels:

Tries: Hegarty, Ellison

Con: Woodward

Pen: Woodward

For the Hurricanes:

Try: Smith

Con: Barrett

Pens: Barrett 6

Yellow card: Conrad Smith (Hurricanes, 68 – repeated infringements at breakdowns and mauls)

Teams:

Rebels: 15 Jason Woodward, 14 Male Sau, 13 Tamati Ellison, 12 Mitch Inman, 11 Tom English, 10 Bryce Hegarty, 9 Luke Burgess, 8 Scott Higginbotham (captain), 7 Scott Fuglistaller, 6 Colby Fainga'a, 5 Luke Jones, 4 Cadeyrn Neville, 3 Laurie Weeks, 2 Pat Leafa, 1 Cruze Ah-Nau.

Replacements: 16 Shota Horie, 17 Max Lahiff, 18 Paul Alo-Emilie, 19 Hugh Pyle, 20 Sean McMahon, 21 Ben Meehan, 22 Tom Kingston, 23 Angus Roberts.

Hurricanes: 15 Andre Taylor, 14 Cory Jane, 13 Conrad Smith (captain), 12 Alapati Leiua, 11 Julian Savea, 10 Beauden Barrett, 9 TJ Perenara, 8 Victor Vito, 7 Ardie Savea, 6 Faifili Levave, 5 James Broadhurst, 4 Jeremy Thrush/Blade Thomson, 3 Ben Franks, 2 Dane Coles, 1 Reggie Goodes.

Replcements: 16 Motu Matu'u, 17 Chris Eves, 18 Jeffrey Toomaga-Allen, 19 Blade Thomson/Brad Shields, 20 Jack Lam, 21 Billy Guyton, 22 Tim Bateman, 23 Matt Proctor

Referee: Matt O'Brien (Australia)

Assistant referees: Steve Walsh (Australia), Ed Martin (Australia)

TMO: Peter Marshall (Australia)