The Crusaders taking a few weeks to warm up is hardly a new phenomenon, and you only have to go back a fortnight to see them only just clinging onto eighth on the ladder. They’re in the thick of it right now, and they can remain a ‘top half’ team from here on. The Canes I had pegged alongside the Chiefs in mid-table, though I will concede they might just have stumbled onto a good solution for their flyhalf issues in Brett Cameron, who is a much-improved player than when he played his one Test while still a Crusaders rookie. The Crusaders and Hurricanes fit in here as well, albeit for slightly different reasons. They’ve both won games, but they’ve both lost games they felt they should have won, and with some disappointment in performances mixed in as well.īoth have shown signs of improvement though, and this next month quite probably makes or breaks their seasons. Let’s start with the Reds and Drua here, who are both going about as well as expected, and who would describe their season so far as being a frustrating one (exactly the word Harry Wilson used on the pod last week). A seamless takeover for Stephen Larkham thus far. The resting cavalry will return, injured props are working their way back too, and they just seem to have a squad in a good place at the moment. The ACT Brumbies are well ahead too, and as I wrote last week, it was the loss of senior players with nothing really approaching like-for-like in the replacement signings that had me winding them out for this season.īut they’re certainly the best of the Australian teams still, and have a chance to underline that in the coming fortnight with NSW and Queensland to come in successive weeks. I can’t wait to see what they do with this promising start. They’re a very different team this season and playing great rugby to boot. Rebels teams of the past might not have come back from 14-0 down on Saturday night against Queensland, and certainly wouldn’t have composed themselves to regain the lead late in the game and then defend their line to secure the win, as they did. The next five games will be where that growing confidence is tested the most, with three of last year’s semi-finalists to come as well as the Drua in Fiji this weekend.īut on current form, they’re not going to be pushovers in any of these upcoming games, and there will be no reason why they won’t think they can win them all.Īnd they just might. The Melbourne Rebels are the second team well ahead of expectations, and what I love about them at the moment is we can see their confidence growing every week. Rinse and repeat for 2023.Īnd it’s not that I thought they’d be terrible this season, I just had them in that sizable but bound-to-be-tight mid-table group of teams.ĭamian McKenzie of the Chiefs (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images) A quick glance at last year’s edition of the report card showed that they just didn’t feature on my radar for 2022 either, but started the season in superb form. The irony in the case of the Chiefs is that I’ve done it to them again. Three teams fall into this category, and all for the same reason: they’re doing way better than I had them pegged for in the preseason. Ten of the 12 teams are easily sorted, based on how they’re going relative to my loose thoughts on how they might go before a ball was kicked in anger.īut two teams leave me scratching my head a bit and I’m essentially hoping they will fall one direction or the other as we go. In Round 4 that jumped up to 59 tries, and there were 52 last weekend as well, but only four bonus points across the 12 games for scoring three tries more than the opposition, where the average scores work out as home teams 34.5 vs away teams 28.8.įor the report card, I’ve again used the same broad categories as in the most recent editions, with the twist this season being that I’m still trying to shoehorn two teams into a category as I write this. In Round 3, we saw just 36 tries scored across the six games, with five of the six losing teams picking up bonus points for losing by fewer than seven points.
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