Rugby: Timing of break fortuitous for stuttering champions

Chiefs players contemplate their loss to the Waratahs. Photo / Getty Images

The June international window may have arrived at the perfect time for a Chiefs side whose title defence is looking less likely by the week.

A couple of poor performances in successive games have left the champions fourth in the New Zealand conference and appearing in need of a break.

The intervening weeks, before a crunch clash with the Highlanders in Dunedin, will be spent searching for solutions to the problems that have plagued Dave Rennie's side for much of this patchy season.

Impressive efforts have been followed by backward steps, and they have the parity of Super rugby to thank for still being in the playoffs race. They will require wins over the Highlanders (away), Hurricanes (home) and Blues (away) to remain in that race when the competition resumes, a scenario that seems improbable based on recent results. But that's where the international break comes in handy, giving the Chiefs an opportunity to regroup and devise a plan to regain their form of old.

"We just need to make sure we use it wisely," coach Rennie said. "There are certainly some tweaks to our game that we need to make.

"There are more concerns around our attack and obviously that's my responsibility. So we'll use these next few weeks to have a decent look at what we're doing and what changes we need to make. Maybe this June break's come at a good time for us."

The Chiefs have rarely shown the fluency in attack that has made them such a dangerous side during Rennie's tenure, with a glut of injuries preventing consistency in selection. After topping the scoring charts last season, the Chiefs sit ninth this year, and last among Kiwi teams.

"The Hurricanes game, we created a lot of opportunities and we did a lot of good work, but we just didn't finish," Rennie said. "[On Saturday] we battled to do any of that. We just need to be smarter and far more accurate in multi-phase to really put teams under stress."

That goal will be achieved if the Chiefs can eliminate the errors and infringements that created too many turnovers against the Waratahs, whose stifling defence certainly played its part in the result.

Other results aided the Chiefs' cause at the weekend, with four of the seven sides ahead of them also losing, although Rennie saw it as an opportunity lost.

"It would've been a good weekend to win because we would have had the chance to leapfrog quite a lot of teams. But that's the nature of this competition - it's really tight so we're very much in it. Our fate's still in our own hands."