Rugby: Chiefs need their big men to step up

It's only week three but the Chiefs are already in must win mode against the Rebels tonight. Photo / Getty Images

It is time for some of the Chiefs' big-name players to man up.

Having dramatically fallen off the pace in the last half of last year, a trend that has continued into this season, plenty of questions will be asked of outgoing coach Ian Foster.

Most pertinently, how can he expect a team to play with cohesion when he keeps changing the halves combination week by week?

Against the Brumbies it was Brendon Leonard and Stephen Donald's job to guide the visitors around Canberra Stadium; at Carisbrook Tawera Kerr-Barlow and Mike Delany were given the task.

Tonight, against the Rebels, step forward Leonard and Donald. Tana Umaga, at second five-eighths, replaces Jackson Willison, thus restoring the round one inside backs combination.

Say what you like about rugby being a 22-man game nowadays, it is no coincidence that the most successful sides happen to be the most settled.

Eight changes between week one and week two, five changes from round two to three. Admittedly some of them were enforced, but the dwindling Chiefs' faithful have every right to query whether there's a masterplan at play or a giant game of guesswork.

The lack of progress this season even spurred one of their former, prop Richard Loe, to (mischievously) suggest on rugby show Re:Union that Foster might be in for the Andy Friend treatment if the Chiefs do the unthinkable and lose at home to the Rebels, referring to the axeing of the Brumbies coach after they lost in Melbourne last weekend.

It's safe to assume, on three fronts, that Foster is safe. First, New Zealand teams have never been big on mid-season sackings. Two, the Chiefs are notoriously slow starters and the extended season means there is more time than usual for them to turn it around. Three, while the buck stopping with the coach has become de rigeur, there are too many players going missing at big moments to lay all the blame at Foster's door.

The Chiefs might have been hampered by a scattergun selection policy, but that's not what has lost them the past two games, or the games stretching back to last April.

Those matches have been lost by amateur-hour errors made by fully professional players: the consistently excellent Mils Muliaina over-running the ball carrier in round one when a try seemed certain; Tim Nanai-Williams dropping the ball over the line; Stephen Donald missing easy kicks; Tawera Kerr-Barlow getting sinbinned for a blatant penalty.

Liam Messam did his World Cup prospects no harm with a strong, albeit bit-part, end-of-year tour. Yet against the Highlanders he fell asleep when Nasi Manu took a quick tap from the back of a scrum five metres out. Messam was barely even in the frame when his opposite crashed over.

Foster needs his big men, his All Blacks in particular, to step up. It's unlikely they will get an easier game this season than the patchwork Rebels at home. A win will go only a small way to convincing the punters the Chiefs are holding a decent hand, but a loss would go a long way to confirming they are a busted flush.