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The Australian ~ A branch of the Brumbies Propaganda Initiative
Wayne Smith | May 15, 2009
IT'S the unspoken motivation, alluded to only in the vaguest of fashions, but there is no doubt the Brumbies are playing tonight to keep alive the season in which Shawn Mackay died.
Coach Andy Friend, the man who gave Mackay his big break into Super rugby this year, noted yesterday on the eve of the Brumbies' must-win match tonight against the Chiefs in Hamilton that the side had only genuinely believed in itself "for the last four or five weeks".
Wallabies captain Stirling Mortlock, one of a dozen Brumbies players out with Mackay on the night he was struck by an armed-response vehicle as he crossed a road outside a Durban nightclub, observed that "the team in the last five or six weeks has come together and grown".
It was, of course, just over five weeks ago, on April 6, that Mackay died in a Durban hospital from complications arising from his injuries.
Since then the Brumbies have played with his name embroidered into the breast of their jersey and it is fast becoming a custom in the side for try-scorers to put hand over heart in celebration.
Mackay, a fierce competitor, would have relished this contest tonight. The Brumbies might be facing the most lethal team in the Super 14 but their destiny is entirely in their own hands.
If they win with a bonus point and beat the Chiefs by more than seven, they will qualify for the playoffs - which could well involve an emotional trip back to South Africa, although mercifully almost certainly not to Durban.
The Brumbies have been in this position before, and in Hamilton too. Back in 2004, when admittedly the most traumatic thing that occurred all-season was the mid-campaign coup to terminate coach David Nucifora's contract, they arrived at the Waikato Stadium level with the Chiefs on seven wins apiece.
The battle was an epic, going the Brumbies' way 15-12 but the following week in Canberra in the semi-final, they won the rematch more convincingly, 32-17, on their way to claiming their last Super rugby title.
That was an ACT side full of hardheads, George Gregan, Steve Larkham, Owen Finegan, Bill Young, Joe Roff, Jeremy Paul, George Smith and Mortlock.
Mortlock and Smith are still there, Clyde Rathbone, who made his finals debut against the Chiefs, has been resurrected on the wing, and Finegan and Young are back as respective lineout and scrum coaches, but otherwise it's a new generation entirely.
First-season captain Stephen Hoiles conceded he could face some tricky calls in weighing up the almost mutually exclusive needs to first win the match, then secure a bonus point and finally to ensure the Chiefs do not secure a bonus point themselves.
"I know there will probably be a couple of difficult decisions to make," Hoiles said. "That's part of the game and we'll just cross that bridge when we come to it."
The Brumbies are not the side to throw the ball around willy-nilly at the best of times, let alone against a team so heavily populated with players capable of exploiting turnovers. None of the talk in their team meetings this week has been focused on scoring four tries and Friend is adamant that mindset will not infect their game tonight.
"In all honesty, it's not even a thought," he said. "It's about us playing our style of footy and making secure the win."
It will be Friend's call from up in the coaches box when the Brumbies switch into all-out attack mode. "It may be at half-time. It may be at 60 minutes. It may be at 70 minutes where we feel like 'OK, we're now in a position to have a crack at another try or two more tries'. But it's about getting the win."
The Brumbies might lose a little in the lineout with Mitchell Chapman out injured but his replacement, Julian Salvi, plays harder at the ball and against Tanerau Latimer and Liam Messam, Smith is going to need all the help he can get at the breakdown.
Mortlock's aggressive defence on the wing helped turn the tide of battle against the Blues last weekend and he again looms as a pivotal figure now that he has moved back to his preferred outside centre position, marking glamour All Black Richard Kahui.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...5-2722,00.html
---------- Post added at 13:19 ---------- Previous post was at 06:35 ----------
Sadly its likely only a few hours left in the Brumbies season...
Its been fun, but now for the Wallabies, we can all be on the same team....
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