The Chiefs’ 85-7 win over Moana Pasifika makes them favourites for the Super Rugby final.
The Crusaders edged the Highlanders 15-12, showcasing their resilience despite a challenging match.
Cam Roigard and Ruben Love’s performance in the Hurricanes’ 31-27 win hints at future All Black potential.
The pressure of expectation can be difficult to deal with in sport but it would be extraordinary if the final of Super Rugby Pasifika wasn’t played in Hamilton in four weeks.
After their almost surreal 85-7 demolition of Moana Pasifika on Saturday night, it seemsunlikely the Chiefs will stumble in Dunedin against the Highlanders on Friday. A win will see the Chiefs top the round-robin table.
It’s a tougher task for the Crusaders, who face the best Australian team, the Brumbies, in Canberra in the late game next Friday. Nevertheless, I’d tip an all-Kiwi final with the Chiefs pitted against the Crusaders. There are so many players in the Crusaders who have faced knockout games in Super Rugby, I see them as genuine challengers.
Until the whistle blew for the start of Saturday’s game in Hamilton, it had been a wonderful week for Moana. Fully deserved plaudits had showered their inspirational captain Ardie Savea, and they had taken their place in the top six on the table with humble grace.
What nobody could really have anticipated was a night when every aspect of a powerful Chiefs side was on song. A review of tapes from the match would not reveal a single area where the Chiefs might have been vulnerable. Poor Moana were steamrolled.
From a potent scrum to finely tuned lineouts to fantastic work at the breakdowns, where former schoolboy star Simon Parker was especially impressive, the forward contest was stunningly one-sided.
With a totally dominant pack, the Chiefs backs showed all their dazzling skills. Any one of them could have taken a man of the match title but my choice was former sevens superstar Leroy Carter on the wing. How the 26-year-old’s career progresses now will be fascinating to watch.
Accuracy under pressure
It was heart monitor territory for fans of the Crusaders and Highlanders, as the two teams slugged it out in front of a capacity crowd in Christchurch on Friday night.
The Crusaders edged to a 15-12 victory. Measured and often daring this year, on Friday the energy and determination of the Landers sometimes had the Crusaders looking ragged to the point where one successful kick would have won it for the luckless men from Dunedin.
But ultimately, in the 72nd minute, it was accuracy from a lineout that led to a try for Tamaiti Williams and took the game for the Crusaders. It wasn’t remotely the best performance of 2025 for Rob Penney’s team, but it did demonstrate an ability to win even when the machine has cylinders misfiring.
Tamaiti Williams scores for the Crusaders against the Highlanders. Photo / Photosport
The right place
Initially it felt a little weird for Sevu Reece’s record 66th try in Super Rugby being scored in a sweaty tussle on the tryline, rather than after a dramatic run. But in fact it was probably appropriate, as Reece is one of those fearless smaller wingers like 2011 World Cup winner Cory Jane, who don’t hesitate to mix it with hulking forwards.
Are we seeing the future?
A key element in the arm wrestle in Brisbane on Friday night, won 31-27 by the Hurricanes, was the combination between Canes’ halfback Cam Roigard and their first five-eighths Ruben Love. It may well be that we’re getting a preview of how the All Black halves will look in future years.
Roigard’s run of red-hot form actually went up a notch. He performed all the duties you’d expect of a halfback, then in the 36th minute provided a touch of the kind that lifts him to another level. Receiving the ball from a maul on the Reds’ 22, he chipped a perfectly weighted left foot kick ahead, and regained the ball to score himself, and put the Canes ahead, 17-13.
Love has the ebullience and confidence top level first fives require, and the talent to execute his ambitions. How long did it take him to put his mark on the game in Brisbane? Seventy-six seconds after the start he was diving over for a try.
Centres of attention
Competition for the No 13 jersey in the All Blacks has zoomed in the last month. The incumbent Rieko Ioane has two genuine challengers in the Hurricanes’ Billy Proctor, and the Crusaders’ Braydon Ennor.
An Achilles injury kept Proctor out of the early rounds of Super Rugby this year but now he’s back and he’s on fire. Against the Reds in Brisbane he was in the form that won him two test caps (against Fiji and Japan) last year.
Ennor made his All Black debut in 2019, but a shoulder injury has haunted him since. He now looks fully restored and offers a range of skills to go with his size and speed.
Too high a price
I shudder at reports of a new sport, run it straight, in which competitors just smash straight into each other. One of the first sports I covered as a very young reporter in the 1960s was boxing. The bravery of the mostly Polynesian competitors riveted me. Like the boxers themselves I never thought of the consequences.
But in the next two decades the side effects for some were too heart breaking to ignore. In Queen St on a warm 1980s afternoon I heard my name called. I was confronted by a former national champion, a lovely sunny guy with a terrific sense of humour. It was quickly clear he had suffered catastrophic brain damage. The quick-witted, bright-eyed young man I’d known when he was a boxer could barely speak or walk.
His state was, it transpired, shared by a scarily large number of his former colleagues. Brain damage doesn’t heal like a broken bone. If we ignore the warnings from medical experts about the trauma that run it straight competitors may face later in their lives, shame on us all.
