Hurricanes and All Blacks halfback Cam Roigard believes his Super Rugby team’s previous finals disappointments will fuel their determination in Saturday’s semifinal against the Blues.
The Hurricanes have won only one championship – in 2016 – and have suffered a series of playoffs failures since.
Last year they were knocked out at the first hurdle by the Brumbies in Canberra. The Brumbies also did for them in 2023 and 2022. In 2024, they were downed in a semifinal by the Chiefs in Wellington.
This year has potential to be very different given how well Clark Laidlaw’s men are playing, and they were untroubled in dispatching the Brumbies 66-12 last weekend. But while their physical skills – particularly on attack – have been all but irresistible, this match against the Blues at the Cake Tin will be a huge test of where they are at mentally.
Will their sparkling offense hold up under the pressure of recent history and the general belief that the franchise may not get another chance to win a championship in the near future?
“I feel that as a group and as players who’ve been here for a long time we have faced a lot of adversity when we didn’t meet our expectations as a club and a team… now we’re in a good spot to potentially win a home final which hasn’t happened in 10 years,” Roigard said.
No team looks better coached than the Hurricanes this year and no team is playing with the confidence and variety that they are. In an age of formulaic patterns in professional rugby, they are breaking the mould and the game is far better for it.
They are hot favourites to deny the Blues, the competition’s “lucky losers” who have lost their last four matches and were thrashed 52-31 by the Crusaders last weekend, but Roigard and his teammates quite rightly believe that most of the pressure is on themselves and as the competition front-runners they have embraced the expectation.
“It would be silly to think they’re a team that’s going to fold over,” he said of the Blues. “I don’t think the last few weeks will be a reflection of how they’re going to play. They’ll be physical. They’ve still made a semifinal which have obviously come down to the performances at the start of the season which created a buffer for them.
“They’ll be throwing everything at it. We can probably work out the stance they’ll have towards the game – that we’re the ones under pressure with the expectation.”
Assistant coach Jason Holland, the former All Blacks assistant who is joining the Blues as head coach next year, said of the Blues: “I have no doubt they’ll be excited about coming down here… [because of] you guys [media] writing them off, and the mindset to get into us. They’ve scored 30 points in their last five or six games, maybe minus one. They’re a massive threat and we’ll have to be on our game.”
As a prominent part of New Zealand Rugby’s coaching merry-go-round – and Tony Brown is the latest addition – has he taken any extra interest in the Blues since being appointed as Vern Cotter’s successor?
“When you get towards the end of the season you have enough work with one team. That’s been my focus… we’ll worry about what comes next after that.”
Super Rugby Pacific playoffs
Friday, 7.05pm: Chiefs v Crusaders, Hamilton
Saturday, 7.05pm: Hurricanes v Blues, Wellington
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