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Hurricanes bring in halfbacks from rival franchises

Jonathan Taumateine prepares to feed the ball into the scrum. (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

The Hurricanes have signed halfbacks Jamie Booth and Jonathan Taumateine for the next two Investec Super Rugby seasons.

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The pair replace Richard Judd and Finlay Christie, with the former leaving the Hurricanes to take up a contract in Japan while the latter signed for the Blues.

Booth, who was schooled at Palmerston North Boys’ High School, is no stranger to the Hurricanes having been a member of the wider training squad in 2016 before returning in 2018 when he made eight appearances.

The 24-year-old left the capital to play for the Sunwolves in the 2019 where he established himself as their first choice halfback. He has also returned to Manawatu to play in the Mitre 10 Cup.

Taumateine, 22, has taken the opportunity to move south after previously representing the Chiefs.

The former Samoa and New Zealand Under-20 representative has impressed in recent seasons with Counties Manukau.

Hurricanes head coach John Plumtree welcomed Booth back into the squad while he believed Taumateine would be a positive addition to the 2020 squad.

“We’ve seen Jamie continue to develop his game while he has been in Japan and he performed really well under some trying circumstances at times,” he said.

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“Jonathan is a player who we think has real potential to develop at a fast pace. He’s a young player who has already shown considerable talent.”

– Hurricanes Rugby

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Flankly 1 hour 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 1 hour 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
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