The Brumbies are the only unbeaten team through three weeks of Super Rugby, after No. 8 Charlie Cale scored post-siren in Canberra to sneak them past the Blues.
Elsewhere, there were wins for the Force, Reds, Drua and Crusaders.
This might be the best iteration of Super Rugby Pacific – but one that is proving a challenging assignment for tipsters at the same time.
So far this season, seven of the 15 games across the first three rounds have been won by the outsider, with Round 3 delivering the season’s biggest upset yet as the $1.14 Hurricanes were toppled by the Drua in Fiji.
Saturday’s triple-header was the best day of action yet this season, too.
From the slopfest in Lautoka, where the Drua produced an incredible match-winner given the conditions, to the Crusaders surging back to form against the Chiefs, and then a gripping Brumbies-Blues encounter, Saturday’s games delivered something for every rugby supporter and an absolute treat for the neutrals.
Better yet, the Chiefs-Crusaders game was played in front of over 18,000 fans, which provided an atmosphere that added to a genuinely spicy contest that almost boiled over completely as the players departed for halftime.
The key now is to make last Saturday’s games the rule, not the exception.
While Moana Pasifika’s ability to compete week in week out remains a concern, and the Drua and Force’s road challenges are well known, if Super Rugby is to really recapture the broader rugby community’s attention, then it needs to deliver consistently even contests where the outcome is not largely predictable before kick-off.
Sure, there will still be scoreline blowouts along the way. That is the nature of sport.
But it would be great to not only have jeopardy in the race for the top three at the end of the year, but so too a scramble for fourth, fifth and sixth when as many teams as possible are still alive.
SCRUMS BEING DEPOWERED IN SUPER RUGBY? TELL US ANOTHER ONE…
The rugby world was whipped into a frenzy late last week when a WalesOnline report suggested that Australia and New Zealand had attempted to further reduce the prominence of scrums by lobbying for Super Rugby’s latest tranche of law variations to be applied across the globe, too.
Those include the removal of a scrum option for accidental offsides, and a failure to “use it” when the referee has called for play to move on at the back of a ruck.
Citing a report in French publication L’Equipe, the WalesOnline article suggested Australia and New Zealand wanted to go further than removing the scrum option from a free kick, as was done almost two years ago.
“The governing bodies of New Zealand and Australia want to ‘shake things up by radically altering the game, even if it means turning their backs on some of its founding elements’, with South Africa and France opposing them in favour of a more traditional version of the game,” the WalesOnline report read.
The reaction on social media was, unsurprisingly, about as measured as the article itself, particularly from rugby fans in Europe and South Africa.
What those same fans should have done, however, was switch on the Crusaders-Chiefs and Brumbies-Blues games on Saturday, both of which demonstrated just how important the scrum remains in Super Rugby even amid further law tweaks.
First the Crusaders used the set-piece as a platform to rattle the Chiefs, the hosts finishing with only an 83% success rate on their own ball, while the defending champions were awarded three penalties for either dominant shoves or an infringement from their opposition.
Later in the closing game of the round, Blues prop Ofa Tu’ungafasi was repeatedly penalised for collapsing against the Brumbies, and finally received a warning from referee Angus Gardner early in the second half.
Tu’ungafasi was mystified by Gardner’s rulings, but given Gardner’s explanation it was hard to see how the Blues prop had a case.
Knowing that one more penalty would see Tu’ungafasi yellow-carded, Blues coach Vern Cotter replaced his prop with Mason Tupaea, who made an immediate difference as the Aucklanders won a penalty at the front-rower’s very first scrum.
Finally, there were 15 and 12 scrums across the two games respectively, which is ample opportunity for a team with a dominant scrum to use that set-piece to their advantage, just as the Crusaders did against the Chiefs.
The overreaction to the WalesOnline report was incredible, and thankfully later largely put to bed by World Rugby following its “Shape of Game” meetings.
GORDON SOLID IN OPENING REDS HIT-OUT
Carter Gordon at last made his Super Rugby debut for the Queensland Reds, six years after he departed the club for pastures greener in Melbourne.
Gordon’s arrival at Ballymore has created a logjam of playmakers for Reds coach Les Kiss, and after missing the team’s Round 1 loss to the Waratahs a fit-again Gordon was handed the No. 10 jersey against the Highlanders.
The Wallabies playmaker was a little patchy early on, and threw one terrible pass from the breakdown while deputising for scrum-half Louis Werchon that resulted in a knock-on.
But Gordon built slowly into the game thereafter and seemed to fit naturally in the now trademark sweeping Reds plays that create space in the wider channels.
It was however centre Josh Flook who did the ball-playing for the Reds’ vital strike before halftime, the midfielder holding the ball up beautifully to put Joe Brial into a yawning hole, before Tim Ryan finished the play in the corner.
Harry Wilson’s through-the-legs pass was another memorable moment from the Reds, who delivered a much better performance than their first-up loss to the Waratahs.
But they will need to improve further once more as they head to Canberra to face the Brumbies, where an intriguing coaching battle between Wallabies-coach elect Kiss and the man he beat for the role, Stephen Larkham awaits.
Gordon, meanwhile, will soon also face a challenge at No. 10 from teammate Tom Lynagh, though the youngster’s ongoing injury woes are becoming harder to ignore.
