Qualifying Final Brumbies v Hurricanes (3rd v 4th) Sat 7th June @ GIO Stadium 7.35pm AEST

[JRugby2]

credit where it is due - My general feeling is that the reds lack size, but the brumbies aren't a much bigger team yet manage to be more effective in attack out wide. Saders have great defence but no points until the 70th minute is an indictment on Kiss and inversely a big boost for Bernie with his boys a dud call away from beating them last week in a relatively high scoring game.

Brumbies doing Australia proud once again,

PS I'll be as arrogant as ever about the Reds being the benchmark for Australia again next year. Like all things aus rugby - nothing is as confidence building as just not playing for a little bit.

 

[Tomthumb]

Yes the Brumbies certainly have more structure and seem to understand the other teams tendencies well and will target areas they can effectively attack from. Bernie has certainly improved this part of his coaching

Whereas the Reds seem to flow through each game with the same plan regardless. We have 14 games of film on the Crusaders, so to think spinning it from side to side was going to get anywhere vs them seems naive. If that was really the gameplan then the players were kind of set up to fail IMO

 

[Dan54]

The NFL only did it for about 25 years. The 1st and 2nd seeds earn a bye and the remaining 4 play each other

This nonsense about "lucky losers" and games being dead rubbers in the playoffs is peak Super rugby galaxy brain silliness

Yep TT, I not sure about lucky losers etc, but most teams don't want a break. and pretty sure TV wants more not less games. My preference for a comp would be no finals, just first past post (still the best way), and you could throw in a knockout type comp (FA cup style)during year to mix it up. At moment we have neither one or other, we go first past post until last few weeks.

 

[KOB1987]

Look, I do agree with you, I think when they worked this out they weren't really expecting the 1st placed team to lose to the 6th placed one, statistically.

If done your way someone would be playing the Chiefs in Hamilton and someone would be playing the Crusaders in Christchurch. It's not really any different at the end of the day, only no one got a week off.

 

[Tomthumb]

The difference is the Chiefs lost, yet have a game this week. Their season should be over, losing to the 6th ranked team they deserve to be out

And if they won it would have made the Brumbies V Hurricanes utterly pointless as both teams were through. What kind of comp has a dead rubber in the playoffs?

 

[KOB1987]

As I said, I agree with you, but it hasn't really resulted in a different pair of semis to what several other iterations would have. The Brumbies should have a home semi but that's not because of the finals structure.

 

[dru]

it just makes the discussion more tedious.

Yep