Hurricanes don't need anything 'special' to beat Bulls
SUPER RUGBY SPOTLIGHT: The Hurricanes believe they don’t need to do anything “special” on the field to beat the Bulls in their Super Rugby quarterfinal in Wellington on Saturday.
The Hurricanes, who finished fourth in the overall standings because of the conference system, finished the regular season with the most wins (12), one more than the table-topping Crusaders and second-placed Jaguares.
Star players Beauden Barrett, Jordie Barrett and Ngani Laumape are all expected to return to the Hurricanes’ starting XV after they were rested during the 29-24 win against the Blues in the final round.
While there will be changes to personnel for Saturday’s quarterfinal, Hurricanes assistant coach Jason Holland said they won’t be making too many tactical changes for the match.
“You don’t want to try and come up with something really special in these games,” Holland told local media in Wellington.
“I think you want to tweak things; you know small tweaks probably are just as good as something magic these days. And that is something that we will be concentrating on.”
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The Hurricanes have not faced the Bulls during the regular season, but they have picked up wins against the three other South African teams.
It was not long ago when the Hurricanes went unbeaten on their two-match South African tour with a 27-17 win over the Sharks in Durban and a 37-17 win over the Lions in Johannesburg.
With this in mind, Holland is confident his team will have the right approach against the Bulls.
“They’re a typical South African side with their strengths around their big boys. We’ll have to meet them at set-piece, around their carry and those sorts of things.
“We’ll have a look at that, but we want to worry about what we do well and that’s important to us.
“We had a pretty good plan when we went to South Africa a couple of weeks ago and it worked so we’ll look to pull out the positives of what we did over there that are relevant to the Bulls,” he added.
Source: tvnz.co.nz & @AllBlacks
