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Another Hurricane reaches ton as Boyd reshuffles backline for quarterfinal

Toomaga Allen

Hurricanes prop Jeff Toomaga-Allen has been named to start in Friday night’s highly anticipated quarter-final against the Chiefs at Westpac Stadium in what will be his 100th Super Rugby match.

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Toomaga-Allen, who brought up his 100th match for the club last week in Hamilton, will become just the 15th Hurricanes player to reach the milestone.

The 27-year-old made his debut for the Hurricanes in 2012 against the Stormers alongside long-time teammates Ben May, TJ Perenara and Brad Shields.

He will be the fourth player this season to reach the mark after Beauden Barrett, Perenara and Shields.

Hurricanes head coach Chris Boyd has named a largely settled squad for the quarter-final.

Captain Brad Shields has been bracketed to allow him as much time as possible to get over a rib injury while Gareth Evans will start in the No 7 jersey in place of Sam Henwood.

There are minimal changes in the back line, although Boyd has moved Jordie Barrett to centre to allow the return of crowd favourite and centurion Julian Savea to the starting XV.

Savea will be on the right wing with Ben Lam on the left as Nehe Milner-Skudder moves to fullback as the Hurricanes prepare to face the Chiefs for the second straight week after the two sides played out an exciting 80 minutes in Hamilton.

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Wes Goosen, who has been recovering from the head knock he suffered last week, has been bracketed on the bench with Jonah Lowe while the squad has been further strengthened by the return from injury of All Black Vaea Fifita.

Boyd said the squad was delighted to have another opportunity to play in front of their home fans and believed the Hurricanes could deliver a performance good enough to keep their season and title hopes alive.

He has been impressed with the way the squad has prepared in the build-up to the match and could sense the excitement levels growing by the day.

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Hurricanes squad to face the Chiefs is:

15 Nehe Milner-Skudder
14 Julian Savea
13 Jordie Barrett
12 Ngani Laumape
11 Ben Lam
10 Beauden Barrett
9 TJ Perenara
8 Blade Thomson
7 Gareth Evans
6 Brad Shields (c) or Reed Prinsep
5 Sam Lousi
4 Michael Fatialofa
3 Jeff Toomaga-Allen
2 Ricky Riccitelli
1 Toby Smith

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Reserves

16 James O’Reilly
17 Chris Eves
18 Ben May
19 Vaea Fifita
20 Reed Prinsep or Sam Henwood
21 Jamie Booth
22 Ihaia West
23 Wes Goosen or Jonah Lowe

 

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Flankly 1 minute ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 10 minutes ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
N
Nickers 39 minutes ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

I thought we made a lot of progress against that type of defence by the WC last year. Lots of direct running and punching holes rather than using width. Against that type of defence I think you have to be looking to kick on first phase when you have front foot ball which we did relatively successfully. We are playing a lot of rugby behind the gain line at the moment. They are looking for those little interchanges for soft shoulders and fast ball or off loads but it regularly turns into them battering away with slow ball and going backwards, then putting in a very rushed kick under huge pressure.


JB brought that dimension when he first moved into 12 a couple of years ago but he's definitely not been at his best this year. I don't know if it is because he is being asked to play a narrow role, or carrying a niggle or two, but he does not look confident to me. He had that clean break on the weekend and stood there like he was a prop who found himself in open space and didn't know what to do with the ball. He is still a good first phase ball carrier though, they use him a lot off the line out to set up fast clean ball, but I don't think anyone is particularly clear on what they are supposed to do at that point. He was used really successfully as a second playmaker last year but I don't think he's been at that role once this year. He is a triple threat player but playing a very 1 dimensional role at the moment. He and Reiko have been absolutely rock solid on defence which is why I don't think there will be too much experimentation or changes there.

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