Former Wallabies Stephen Hoiles and Justin Harrison are tipping the Brumbies to create history by toppling the Chiefs on Saturday to advance to the Super Rugby Pacific final.
Incredibly, no Australian team has won a Super Rugby playoff game in New Zealand since the competition launched in 1996.
The Waratahs and Reds were the latest clubs to come up short on Kiwi soil when they lost to the Blues and Chiefs respectively in last weekend’s quarter-finals.
Watch the 2023 Super Rugby Pacific finals on the home of rugby, Stan Sport. All matches streaming ad free, live and on demand
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But Queensland – who beat the Chiefs in New Plymouth during the regular season - at least gave the minor premiers a scare in its 29-20 defeat in Hamilton.
“Based on the weekend’s performance – the Reds almost got them, they played really well,” Hoiles, a former Brumbies player, said on Stan Sport’s Between Two Posts.
“I’m actually going to go with the Brums on this one. Unless the Chiefs can find the form that we saw a few weeks ago, or midway through the season, I’m going the Brums in a big upset here.”
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Harrison, also a former Brumbies man, concurred.
“I’m the same, I’m going with the Brums. I’m big on this concept that teams seem to do well against other teams historically and repeatedly,” Harrison said.
“We know the Brumbies fell over against the Chiefs at home recently but historically the Brumbies have somehow always been able to outperform the Chiefs when it mattered. And gee dad, it matters.”
NEW PODCAST! Sean Maloney, Stephen Hoiles and Justin Harrison are backing the Brumbies against the Chiefs and reflect on the Waratahs and Reds bowing out of the Super Rugby Pacific finals
The Brumbies also beat the Hurricanes at home in last year’s quarters before a heartbreaking 20-19 semi-final loss to the Blues in Auckland.
Rather than adding more unwanted mental scars, Brumbies lock Tom Hooper spun that Eden Park pain into a positive.
Hooper, a potential Wallabies bolter in 2023, added that the club’s psychology coach had been helpful in creating a winning mindset against Kiwi teams.
“We’re always learning, we’re always evolving,” Hooper told reporters.
“We’re not a lake just sitting there stagnant. We’re a river just always trying to flow and carve a new path and find ways that we can get better.
“Whether that’s little recovery ways, little ways off the field, flexibility. We’ve got a psych coach in – every little detail that we can do just to try and get better because at the end of the day, let’s be real, the New Zealand teams getting better and better every year. So do we, and we’ve got to match them.”
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Hooper was then asked to expand on what work the psychology coach had been doing.
“It’s sort of an individual thing but just making sure that we’re all on the same page and we all have that belief within ourselves,” he said.
“And then go and execute whatever we have been visualizing.”
The statistics do give the Brumbies some hope.
The Chiefs hold a 6-5 all-time advantage in Hamilton, including the 27-22 win in the 2013 final when Dave Rennie was in charge.
The Brumbies have beaten the Chiefs twice in New Zealand in their last six attempts.
“I saw a stat on the tele that no Australian team had won in 14 (finals) games (now 15) in New Zealand and we definitely want to put an end to that,” Hooper said.
“Someone’s got to be the first. So why can’t it be us? The 2013 grand final group came down and watched our Chiefs game a few weeks ago.
“We obviously didn’t get the result on that night, but a lot of those boys spoke about how special that team was and how they went an inch of winning the grand final in 2013. So we’ve got guys like that who are a driving force and they speak about how tight knit that group was. We need to make sure we’re doing the same and putting in our best performance because let’s be honest, nothing but our best is going to win this game.”
SUPER RUGBY PACIFIC SEMI-FINALS
Friday, 5.05pm kick-off AEST: Crusaders (2) vs Blues (3) in Christchurch
Saturday, 5.05pm kick-off AEST: Chiefs (1) vs Brumbies (4) in Hamilton
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