Rugby: Chiefs' fitness counts for more than wins - Foster

The Chiefs might have drawn a blank in their three pre-season matches but they leave for South Africa tomorrow with a cabin full of fit players.

That, says coach Ian Foster, is more meaningful than their 17-12 loss to the Hurricanes in Rotorua yesterday.

"I'm not aware of any correlation between pre-season wins and how you perform in the Super 14 so I am not worried about that," said Foster, who has watched his side finish second against the Highlanders and Blues also in the past three weeks.

"The lift up in performance over our first two games was very pleasing. We certainly learned some lessons last week against the Blues and put some of them into practice. We created more opportunities and overall I would give ourselves a pass mark and it should give us a lift heading into what's going to be a pretty tough couple of weeks."

The Chiefs face the Sharks in Durban next week, before heading to the high veld to play Carlos Spencer's Lions, with a stopover in Perth to meet the Force on the way home.

One of the fascinating aspects of the early rounds will be the battle for possession at the breakdown, with new interpretations of the tackle-ball laws in force to, supposedly, stack the odds more in favour of the attacking team.

Thoughts that the rules - which will see the tackler required to take his hands off the ball to give the man in possession time to release it - will see a return to the try-fest days of Super rugby could be wide of the mark.

If the breakdown became too advantageous for the attacking team, Foster said, teams simply would not commit to rucks, instead concentrating on setting up defensive screens.

"The interesting thing is how far we evolve the [interpretation] and how far we allow it to aid the attacking team. That's going to be the challenge for the game," Foster said.

"It's an area of the game that, whilst people say it's complicated, it's also the beauty, the heart of rugby ... we have to make sure we don't go overboard and [referees should] still allow the defenders a decent bite at the cherry."

Yesterday, flanker Karl Lowe snatched a late intercept try to hand the Hurricanes their win over the Chiefs in both teams' final pre-season match in hot conditions.

Lowe's 70m try made the difference after the Chiefs had turned around a 7-10 halftime deficit through a try to stand-in captain Sione Lauaki.

The Hurricanes' first-half lead was built around unconverted tries to Tamati Ellison and Scott Waldrom, while Tanerau Latimer snared the Chiefs' lone first-half score.