Opinion - Finally, after a long wait, all New Zealand-based Super Rugby teams were in action over the weekend. The problem was they all combined to completely stink up the joint in three forgettable games that should cause alarm for anyone involved in trying to sell this competition as a product.
To call it bottom of the barrel is doing barrels a grave disservice, because even the one game with an admittedly exciting finish had it contrived partly through sheer stupidity.
Caleb Clarke goes over to score a try during the Super Rugby Pacific. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
On Friday night there was plenty of talk around Moana Pasifika and how keeping the margin under 50 points against the Crusaders would be a victory in itself, so when they scored the first try of the game it was cause for celebration. Fair enough too, it was a sweeping move built on staunch defence. But the Crusaders, as they often do, simply put the foot down at the right time to build a lead and sit on it to win 33-12.
So there will now be plenty of talk about how Moana Pasifika showed promise now they're up and running, but really that game said a lot more about the Crusaders. Scott Robertson sent out his B side and repaid his faith by very much playing like one, dropping passes and losing shape so rapidly that 83kg stand-in first five Simon Hickey twice found himself with no better option than to take a hit up. Execution was poor at set piece, so bad it was hard to remember when the 11-time champions were this flat.
But here's the thing: the Crusaders still won very comfortably. For all Moana Pasifika's bravery, their discipline was shocking, conceding a 9-0 penalty count well into the second half. Yes, they are new. Yes, their buildup was incredibly disrupted. But the cold, hard fact of pro rugby is that the only thing that really matters is how many points you've got at fulltime and whether or not it's more than the other team. You can't build a fan base on sympathy.
On Saturday afternoon at Eden Park the Blues paid homage to their performance last weekend against the Hurricanes by repeating it, once again dominating territory and possession only to find themselves losing after 15 minutes. But while last weekend's opening was an impressive display that came undone due to one costly error, this was far more clunky and impatient. The Chiefs got off the mark thanks to the bounce of the ball, but really the rest of the game was just a series of errors and scrums.
Then came the end, a well-worked try to Mark Telea and nerveless sideline conversion by Stephen Perofeta to make the score 24-22 should have been the final act of a frustrating, yet exciting game. However, the Blues forwards inexplicably formed a prebound maul instead of simply taking a tackle that would have ground down the clock, handing the ball back to the Chiefs who promptly got in position for a potential game-winning kick from Bryn Gatland.
It missed (as did an awful lot more over the weekend, to be fair to Gatland, including two sitters by Mitch Hunt and Jordie Barrett). The level of celebration from the Blues said a lot, given that they'd just avoided snatching defeat from the jaws of victory for the second weekend in a row.
Then came a cure for all insomniacs in Wellington, where a Hurricanes side down to their fifth choice halfback got over a Highlanders team that has forgotten how to score tries. Shannon Frizell certainly forgot the double movement rule as he did his best impression of a 110kg earthworm, while winger Liam Coombes-Fabling had a debut to forget that was capped off by getting hit in the head by a cross kick by his own teammate.
Out of all the games, this was the most excruciating, made all the more puzzling that the emptying of both benches actually improved the fluidity and ball security. But it was an extremely low bar to clear.
Annoyingly, the split between the New Zealand and Australian teams is very much making it feel like two separate competitions right now. It's a shame, because the real highlight of the weekend, which was the Fijian Drua scoring a win over the Melbourne Rebels, was more than a decent watch. Let's just hope the Kiwi teams can put this round behind them and get back to playing the way we know they can.
