The Wellington Hurricanes return from overseas to confront a South African opponent on home turf on Friday at the start of the seventh round of rugby union’s Super 14.
In the absence of the competition leaders, the Canterbury Crusaders — who have a bye — the Hurricanes have the chance to move into first place if they can dispatch the Sharks in their first match in four weeks at the Wellington Stadium.
The Hurricanes have faced a run of five matches in five weeks against South African teams, home clashes with the Cats and Sharks bookending their two-from-three record in matches in South Africa.
Their only loss in that stretch and in the season so far has been to the expansion franchise, the Cheetahs, in Bloemfontein.
The Sharks showed themselves to be a difficult opponent with a convincing win over the Otago Highlanders at Carisbrook last week. No South African team in the 10 years of the Super 12 has managed to win as often away from home as the Durban-based Sharks.
The Hurricanes played their last match in South Africa on Saturday morning New Zealand time and, with return air travel, have had only a few days to prepare for Friday’s match.
”The travel back is always tough and it won’t be easy,” Hurricanes coach Colin Cooper said. ”Hopefully, we’ve recovered well enough to combat the Sharks.
”They have a lot more [than other South African teams] in their arsenal on attack as well as defence. They are tough upfront … [former All Black] Tony Brown adds to their kicking game and they have real speedsters on their wings. They are a pretty
good all-round side.”
The Sharks’ win over the Highlanders helped boost South African spirits after the Bulls, Stormers and Cats were beaten in round six, and the Stormers, Sharks and Cats in round five.
”The Sharks are definitely surprising their critics this year,” said Springbok assistant coach Gert Smal.
”A lot of people thought they would be the wooden spooners but they have been playing good attractive rugby.”
The New South Wales Waratahs have a chance to move up with the Crusaders’ bye when they play the Auckland Blues at Sydney on Friday. The Blues lurched away from the bottom of the table last week when they beat the ACT Brumbies for their second win in five games.
The Waratahs share the Hurricanes’ problem of have to make a short turnaround between this week’s game and last week’s against the Western Force in Perth.
”We’re the only team that has to actually fly to Perth and back in a week. Everyone else does it on the way to South Africa, so we’ve actually sort of got a double whammy there which has been hard to deal with,” coach Ewen McKenzie said.
McKenzie has named Peter Hewat at fullback for Friday’s match with Wendell Sailor and Lote Tuqiri on the wings.
”Obviously some of the kicking aspects that Hewat gives us he’s been doing very well this year, so that certainly adds to his strengths,” McKenzie said.
”We think that Sailor’s done a very good job. You’ve only got to pull up the stats. He’s doing more ball carries, more broken tackles, more line breaks than pretty much anyone else going around. So he’s giving us something.
”And Lote obviously certainly doesn’t deserve to get dropped because he’s been picked in the [Commonwealth Games] sevens side.”
In other matches this weekend, the Brumbies play the Waikato Chiefs, the Cheetahs play the Queensland Reds, the Otago Highlanders take on the Cats and the Western Force play the Bulls. – Sapa-AP