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Chiefs boss Clayton McMillan reveals the two key areas they need to improve on to snap losing streak
By Sam Smith
Chiefs head coach Clayton McMillan has taken aim at his side's lack of composure and poor individual tackling in the wake of his side's 39-23 defeat to the Highlanders in Hamilton on Friday.
The loss means the Chiefs have played 10 matches without picking up a victory, with their last win coming exactly one year ago to the day when they thumped the Waratahs 51-14 in Wollongong.
Heading into next week's daunting clash against the Crusaders in Christchurch, the Chiefs run the risk of equaling the worst losing run of any New Zealand franchise, set by the Highlanders when they lost 11 straight between 2012 and 2013.
In order to avoid that unwanted record, McMillan said the Chiefs need to front up defensively and play with more clarity, two aspects of their game that was missing from their defeat, which came after they led the Highlanders 20-6 after 30 minutes.
“[There were] individual missed tackles they obviously exploited,” McMillan said in the post-match press conference.
“I would go back to ‘how did they get those opportunities?’
"We got a bit frantic at times when we just needed that composure. If we were able to get that, we might have been sitting here talking [about] a different story.”
Among those to have fallen off tackles included numerous All Blacks, three of whom - Sam Cane, Tupou Vaa'i and Brad Weber - all failed to bring down man-of-the-match Jona Nareki in the lead-up to Shannon Frizell's try.
Nareki constantly threatened the Chiefs throughout the encounter as he scored a hat-trick of tries and wreaked havoc with ball in hand.
In the build-up to his second try, he slipped out of Anton Lienert-Brown's tackle attempt as he rushed out of the line to shut the wing down, while Folau Fakatava stepped past the defensive efforts of Weber and Samipeni Finau to score his try.
If the Chiefs are to have any chance of snapping their winless streak against the Crusaders, those defensive errors that lead to game-changing scores will need to be eradicated.
Cane suggested his teammates didn't step up take the lead going into the second half they fell victim to Nareki's attacking exploits and threw away their comfortable advantage.
“We came out in that second half and were 10 per cent off, waiting for one another to make the first step,” the Chiefs captain said.
“The Highlanders were the opposite and really took it to us.”
Nevertheless, captain Cane he was looking forward to the challenge of taking on reigning Super Rugby Aotearoa champions, who will play the Hurricanes in Christchurch on Sunday.
“Personally, it always excites me going down there to play them,” he said.
“They’re extremely tough to roll, but it’s the tough games that are the most satisfying.”
Super Rugby Aotearoa is available to watch live and on-demand on RugbyPass for subscribers in the UK, Ireland, France, Singapore and many more territories across the world who hold a tournament pass.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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