Hurricanes beat Blues

I would have used some sort of pun based on the word ‘Hur­ricane’, but, well…

• Blues blown off park [NZ Her­ald]
• Second-half blitz blows Blues away [Domin­ion Post]
• Hur­ricanes storm to win over Blues [The Age]
• Hur­ricanes blow past Blues in open­er [Sport­ing Life]
• Hur­ricanes storm home as new­comers face real­ity [RNZ]

Gah! Any­way, the win augurs well for the new Super 14 com­pet­i­tion. It was par­tic­u­larly sat­is­fy­ing see­ing some smart play from the ‘Canes: eg. hav­ing just seen Jerry Collins (of all people) smash Blues’ half-back Steve Dev­ine onto his head and leav­ing him semi-con­scious, the Black and Golds had the good sense to run human wreck­ing ball Ma’a Nonu straight into and over the groggy Aussie/Aucklander the very next play. Good think­ing lads. Still, early days yet, touch wood, don’t step on the cracks, make sure that mas­cara is water­proof, etc…

And has­n’t the renam­ing of the com­pet­i­tion has opened up a whole new can o’worms? For starters, Super 14 just sounds wrong. Bring on the Fant­ast­ic Four­teen, is this par­tic­u­lar sport-watch­er­’s call. And isn’t it weird how the com­bined 12/14 stats are now referred to by drop­ping the num­ber? eg. “Tana Umaga has now scored 43 Super tries.” I’m sure some were super, but, equally, a few may have just tipped into the realm of ‘reg­u­la­tion’, or even ‘lucky’.

Any­way, if any­one’s play­ing Vir­tu­al­Rugby, drop your user­name in the com­ments box and we’ll add you to our Mates list.