The Southern Kings played the Hurricanes in a round 7 Super Rugby match in Wellington on Saturday. The Hurricanes won comfortably in the end, 46 - 30, but some of the stats will show that the Canes had to work hard for the win.
It took the Hurricanes only 3 minutes to score their first try, they went on to score a further 5, Kings replied with 3 tries of their own. Demetri Catrakilis was successful with 5 from 6 kicks to goal. Canes conceded more penalties then the Kings 11 to 8 and also conceded 1 free kick.
The Hurricanes enjoyed 53% of the possession and 52% of the territory. Its a pity the Kings could not do more with their time in the Canes 22, they spend 3min20sec compared to 2min44sec in their own 22.
The Kings need to work on getting more quick ball from the ruck and mauls, from their 84 they only managed 2 quick balls and 14 slow balls, by that time the defense are already organised and waiting. They managed to get the basics right by winning all 6 of their scrums, won 10 line outs with 1 steal, but unfortunately 2 throws count against them in being not straight.
The Kings managed 91 runs compared to the Canes 90, but they managed more meters, 634 to the Kings 444 meters. The Kings also pushed the Canes to make more tackles 149 to the Kings 138, but the Kings missed 25 to the Canes 11, giving the Kings an 80% effective rate. Both teams managed to force 20 turnovers.
Its not the first time that we see Wimpie van der Walt's name in the most tackles column. He made 20 followed by Andries Stauss 15 and Devin Oosthuizen with 10. Jacques Engelbrecht made the most runs for the Kings, 13 and gaining 77 meters followed by Waylon Murray with 8 runs and 52 meters.
Steven Sykes, Ronnie Cooke and Hannes Franklin all managed one line break. Engelbrecht was leading the ruck and maul count with 12, followed by his two loosies van der Walt and Oosthuizen with 7 each.
Some of the stats shows the Hurricanes conceded more penalties, they had to make more tackles, Kings had more runs and spend more time in the Canes 22, which is all encouraging to see from a Kings point of view. But as we all know rugby is not about who won the stats count after the game, but which team makes most of his opportunities on the field.
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