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Aisle be back: The Super Rugby break and the All Blacks are underway

Hurricanes | 07 June 2018 | Kevin McCarthy

Aisle be back: The Super Rugby break and the All Blacks are underway

Come last Saturday morning, I am sure that you, like I, were feeling a lot like the Roman Emperor Augustus in 9 AD. Shortly after he heard three of his legions, some 20,000 soldiers and camp followers commanded by General Varus, had been lured into an ambush by German tribes and wiped out.

“Varus, give me back by legions!” he reputedly screamed, as he smashed his head against the nearest pillar.

Or as I put it in 2018, “Boyd, give me back my Hurricanes!”. Fortunately, no pillars were within smashing distance.

So to recap, in the space of two games, the Canes have blown any realistic chance of topping the conference and winning home advantage. So precipitous is the slide, even the Brumbies look worrying.

Like the confidence of a lot of fans, they look a bit shot.

I suppose we better hypothesise. So there’s the slow decline theory, in that they haven’t been playing that well for a while. Plausible.

The they’re tired theory. So what. So is everyone else.

They’re a bit distracted what with All Blacks camp. See above.

They not as desperate as the other blokes. Oh lord, no.

RLM

They’ve got worked out and aren’t adapting. Which is kind of what I think is happening.

Perhaps I’m clinging to the latter because at least you can think that can be turned around.

I guess where they go from here depends on whether the Canes can adjust to come up with a winning game plan.

Right now they’re being out-thought, and it’s turning into error ridden performances that fail to build pressure.

It’s that pressure and relentlessness that we’re seeing every week, by and large, from the Crusaders. It doesn’t need to be flashy, it just plays within a well drilled and understood pattern.

It’s built to absorb stress and turn it back on the opposition.

The Canes meanwhile seem to be specialising in not building pressure, and letting the opposition off the hook.

If they can’t manage to turn up the heat across the board, then all the flash backs and attacking intent in the world isn’t going to count for much.

Now I’m not suggesting they try to turn themselves into the Crusaders. But the Canes have got to find a way to utilise their own, pretty formidable, threats without shooting themselves in the feet.

Console yourself with this thought. The Romans over the next few years after that massacre in the Teutoberg Wald, hunted down every one of the missing legionary eagles. Every one.

Now that’s pressure.

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It’s test match time. Even here in Vanuatu, where most people care more about the upcoming world cup. I’ve put money on the Germans and the French, two countries with a proud history of unsuccessful road trips to Moscow.

But back to the rugby. Thanks to a lot of Ni Vanuatu people travelling to New Zealand to do fruit picking, there are a lot of All Black jumpers visible. Some go to Queensland so there are some Wallaby jumpers. There’s even a couple of Bokke jerseys, which I cannot figure out.

Anyway, when it comes to I suspect copyright infringement in stencilling of local cars, the All Blacks win hands-down. Like 50 to 1.

There is in fact one large sedan, in a burnt gold and branded with Qantas Wallabies.

That is one resilient man.

Kevin is a lifetime Hurricanes fan. He and his partner are on a two-year Volunteer Service Abroad posting to Vanuatu's Espiritu Santo island. He's working on a project to build a South Pacific World War 2 museum on the site of an enormous Allied base on the island. Check it out at www.southpacificwwiimuseum.com

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