'Excited' Foster talks up his team

It must be getting close to the business end of the season - the Super 14 coaches are in full cliche mode.

Take Chiefs coach Ian Foster. He's not looking at the points table. He's taking each game as it comes, you see, happy to let what will be, will be.

And then there is the fact the coaches are all finding inordinate positives in performances that really aren't anywhere near as good as they should be.

Sir Clive Woodward was the master of after-match theatre. He knew the importance of talking up his players as the serious end of a competition approached, no matter how they were performing.

It's a skill being learned in New Zealand, which is why this weekend every coach has accentuated the positives to try to convince forthcoming opponents they are set to face one of the competition's contenders. There was certainly an element of cliche talk from Foster last night.

"Quite frankly, I don't really know what the gap is [between the Chiefs and the fourth-placed team]," he said when asked if he felt the points gap between the top four and the rest was an accurate reflection of the competition.

"What I do know is that we have got four games to go and we have won two and drawn one out of our last three games and we have to keep building and what will be, will be."

And then, just to prove he was getting the hang of this lark the Poms love to call spin, he waxed lyrical about his players and their performance.

"There is enough to keep a coach happy. With four rounds to go, I'm pretty excited we have got a bit more to come. What we saw tonight was two teams pretty fired up, pretty aware of the importance of the game.

"What I really liked was the way we went in with a very positive mindset and we didn't change. We are not too far away. We saw some good work at lineout time. We got our drive going in the second half. I felt we got our back three and midfield really starting to attack."

He's right about his midfield and, who knows, if the Chiefs raise their game 100 per cent, what might be is a place in the top four.