Friendly loss not all bad for the Canes

Hurricanes fans did have something to smile about after their team's 19-8 loss to the Crusaders in their Super 15 pre-season rugby match played before 8000-plus vocal fans at Mangatainoka on Saturday.

For while it was the Crusaders who were clearly more proficient in their finishing work when tries beckoned, scoring three to their opposition's one, the Hurricanes shared the honours in territory and possession, and would very probably have run the Southerners closer had they chosen to take the many comfortable goal kicking opportunities given them throughout the course of the game.

Invariably they elected a scrum or lineout instead in an attempt to create five pointers and just as invariably they failed to achieve their objective.

Up front the Hurricanes had good reason to be pleased with the accuracy of their lineout work, a department in which stand-in skipper All Black Victor Vito, Mark Reddish and James Broadhust were outstanding, and there was a lot to like too about the aggressiveness of their loose forward play.

There too the ever-present Vito was a standout on both attack and defence and he was given excellent support by the likes of Jack Lam and Faifili Levave.

Lam, especially, was impressive in the first quarter, often making key tackles and running powerfully in broken play.

The one blot on the Hurricanes forward effort came in the scrums where they struggled to provide a stable platform against the tightly-knit Crusaders unit. In fact, it was not until Ben May and Michael Bent took up the propping roles later in the match that the ship was steadied to an acceptable standard.

The Hurricanes backs might have lacked the fluency on attack of their Crusaders counterparts but under the astute direction of promising first-five Beauden Barrett they were certainly prepared to run hard and straight, none more so than midfielders Charlie Ngatai and Alapata Leilia and utility player Andre Taylor, who made the initial break when Barrett scored his team's only try late in the game.There were some nice touches from All Black Cory Jane too.

The Crusaders were pretty much what you'd expect the best-performed team in Super rugby history to be.There was nothing too flashy about their play but they executed their plans clinically, particularly in the forwards where the Franks brothers, Owen and Ben, Quentin McDonald and Corey Flynn gave them staggering depth in their front row and where the Whitelock brothers, lock Samuel, and loosies George and Luke were into everything at a great rate of knots.

Remarkably, a fourth Whitelock in Adam - all of them growing up on a farm only 30 minutes from Mangatainoka - was an integral part of a Crusaders backline which often stretched the Hurricanes defence with the slickness of their passing and their speed of foot.