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'From a football point of view we're playing a brand of rugby that's attractive to watch'

Brumbies coach Dan McKellar. (Photo / Getty Images)

Brumbies coach Dan McKellar wants a season-best 15,000 in the house to help the club secure its first Super Rugby finals victory in four years.

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The Brumbies have a golden opportunity to break a 15-year title drought thanks to a favourable finals draw and a full-strength squad.

Their post-season campaign begins with a home quarter-final against the Sharks on Saturday and McKellar has called on fans to return for the sudden-death clash.

The Brumbies struggled, along with the rest of the competition, to draw crowds in the regular season and recorded its second lowest average attendance (8509) in history this year.

The Canberra club can potentially host all three finals after finishing third on the ladder and McKellar said they’ll need crowd support to clinch their first championship since 2004.

“There’s no doubt if you’ve got 15,000 people cheering you, on your home turf, it makes a massive difference, especially when times are tough,” McKellar told AAP.

“There are going to be times on Saturday night when our backs are against the wall and just having that extra support, knowing your supporters are there driving you on, the adrenaline certainly goes to another level.”

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The Brumbies can hardly be blamed for the dip in support this season, they’ve been playing scintillating rugby and are gunning for club record seventh straight win.

The Australian conference winners have scored the second-most tries (65) through a combination of running rugby and grunt work in the forwards.

“As an organisation we’ve done a lot of work to ensure we get good support and from a football point of view we’re playing a brand of rugby that’s attractive to watch,” McKellar said.

“There’s a group of guys there that love representing the Brumbies and the community, so all signs lead to a good crowd this weekend.”

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Super Rugby’s flawed ladder, due to the conference system, means the Brumbies will avoid the two best-performing teams this season, the Crusaders and Hurricanes, until the final.

If results fall their way and the Brumbies host all three finals, they’ll face New Zealand outfits the Chiefs and Hurricanes over the next two weeks.

But that scenario could cost the club as they must pay $75,000 to visiting teams, as per a Super Rugby agreement, and small crowds would see the Brumbies dip into their own pockets.

– AAP

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Flankly 2 hours 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?

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