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Super Rugby playoffs: Things you need to know

Curwin Bosch gets the nod at 10 for the Sharks

While the Super Rugby playoff contenders were a fairly predictable bunch, there’s been a few goings on that may not make the outcomes so straight-forward.

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The Hurricanes, as expected, booked their place in the semi finals last night with a win over the Brumbies. This was despite only looking like they were interested in playing the second half, but at least they ran up the scoreline that everyone was expecting in the end.

However, the remaining three fixtures aren’t so clear cut – and it’s more than just what will happen on the field that’s affecting them.

  • New Zealand’s weather: Right now the entire country is caught in a deluge of biblical proportions, with flooding up and down the South Island. While AMI Stadium in Christchurch should be in good shape for the playoff between the Crusaders and Highlanders, the same can’t be said of Dunedin airport. The Highlanders were due to fly out of last night, but that was delayed till today – meaning the visitors will arrive mere hours before kickoff. The good news is that it’s a relatively short trip, but it’s still pretty inconvenient for the biggest game of the season so far.

https://twitter.com/LimaSopoaga/status/888246045267812353

  • Hard-ass South African border control: NZ customs will definitely not being a Christmas card from the Chiefs this year, after the wrong date was stamped in midfielder Alex Nankivell’s entry visa to South Africa. It meant that he was turned away by an unwavering border officer when he got off the flight, and had to fly all the way back to NZ. While Nankivell probably wouldn’t have started the match against the Stormers, it’s still a bit of a disruption that they didn’t need.
  • A change at 10 for the Sharks: Curwin Bosch comes into the starting lineup at the expense of Garth April, who started last weekend’s high irrelevant match between the two sides. Sharks coach Robert du Preez said that he’s looking for ‘greater intensity’ from his players this week, which would be a good idea given they could’ve been mistaken for a team that wanted to lose their last match.
  • If the Lions and Crusaders lose it’ll throw everything up in the air: While the Sharks were more than happy to avoid a trip to NZ this weekend, if they pull off a victory it’ll mean the Hurricanes will host a semi final against them next week. If the Crusaders go down to the Highlanders, that could mean the final will take place in Wellington as well – a repeat of last year and a scenario Canes fans would’ve written off after their loss to the Chiefs before the British & Irish Lions tour.
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J
JW 5 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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