Will the 'real Hurricanes' please stand up?
SUPER RUGBY SPOTLIGHT: The Crusaders may be red-hot favourites to win their ninth title, but the Hurricanes won’t be overawed in Christchurch on Saturday.
The Canes have won eight of their past 12 meetings with the Crusaders and were the last team to beat them in Christchurch in July 2016, the year they won their maiden Super Rugby title.
Coach Chris Boyd said “the real Hurricanes” turned up for the win against the Chiefs and he will be looking for the same urgency.
“We qualified for the quarterfinals about four or five weeks ago and since then we’ve been stuttering along with good intent,” he said.
“We’ve been a little passive really but [against the Chiefs] the boys finally got excited and put a bit of a performance on.”
If the Hurricanes are to pull off an upset in Christchurch, they will need to contain a powerful Crusaders pack.
And it could be an even more powerful pack that faces the Hurricanes with the expected return of Joe Moody.
The 34-Test prop missed the 40-10 quarterfinal victory over the Sharks because of a knee injury but coach Scott Robertson indicated he was likely to be available, lifting the number of Test caps in the Crusaders’ pack to 405 among seven players led by Kieran Read with 109. Samuel Whitelock has 99 and Owen Franks 98.
The Hurricanes fielded just two international forwards when beating the Chiefs 32-31 – Jeff Toomaga-Allen and Brad Shields with three caps between them.
Despite their wealth of talent, the Crusaders lost four of their own line-outs and suffered eight turnovers.
“You have to be ‘on’ – we know that,” said Crusaders head coach Scott Robertson, who called for improvement. “You have to be absolutely ‘on’.”
Source: AFP
