The NSW Waratahs will open their Harvey Norman Super Rugby Trans-Tasman campaign against the Hurricanes at the SCG on Friday night and both teams have plenty of motivation after finishing on the bottom of their domestic competitions.
The Waratahs and the Hurricanes have not played since 2019 with last season’s fixture cancelled due to COVID. The last match in 2019 was a thriller with Bernard Foley missing a long-range penalty goal after the siren allowing the Hurricanes to run out 20-19 winners in front of a full house at Brookvale Oval.
NSW Waratahs Co-Coach Jason Gilmore has been impressed with the improvements his side has shown in the final three rounds of Super Rugby AU and is excited for the challenge that lies ahead.
“We’ve just tinkered with our attack a little bit in those last three games to get the ball into the hands of Izaia Perese and Lalakai Foketi and those guys, so I think we’ve simplified what we’re doing and we’re starting to see some really good reward there,” Gilmore said.
“Set piece wise our scrum has improved across those last three weeks, and then it’s a spinoff where the better your attack is the better your defence is and vice-versa.
“So, I think across all elements we’ve shown improvement, but we can’t kid ourselves, we didn’t win games of football.”
The Waratahs have not played a New Zealand Super Rugby franchise since Round 6 in 2020 against the Chiefs and will play all five of their Kiwi counterparts over five blockbuster weeks.
The New Zealand sides have been heavily favoured to perform well in the Trans-Tasman competition, but Gilmore was happy for the Australian sides to fly under the radar.
“I think the Australian teams are well placed to give it a crack, I think we saw a great final on the weekend between the Brumbies and the Reds, I think they’ve definitely got the firepower to win games of football against the Kiwi’s,” Gilmore said.
“I love that stuff, if you’re the underdog going in and no one expects anything of you it’s a perfect position for the Australian teams to come out swinging, especially in those first couple of rounds.
“We want to be pretty aggressive with what we want to do in this competition, how that pans out, that’s up to us with our performances on the weekend. We’re excited to see what we can do in this competition.”
A shining light for the Waratahs in the past three matches has been the growing combination of centre pairing of Izaia Perese and Lalakai Foketi with the latter echoing his coach’s sentiments on the next instalment of Super Rugby.
“Obviously Super Rugby AU didn’t go the way we wanted it to but the last couple of weeks we’ve been pumped and raring to go,” Foketi said.
“We’ve turned the leaf on the Super Rugby AU page, and we can’t wait to see what we can do against these kiwi teams.”
