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THE Brumbies recorded one of their greatest ever wins on Saturday when they toppled the Bulls 26-23 at the seemingly impregnable Loftus Versfeld with a last-ditch try.
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The victory set up a title decider with defending champions the Chiefs in Hamilton on Saturday and resulted in the Wallabies altering plans for their upcoming 40-man camp in preparation for the first Bledisloe Cup match against New Zealand in Sydney on August 17.
The Brumbies boast the most number of players in the Australian squad with 12.
“We’ll tweak our camp around that. We’ve always had that in the back of our mind as a possibility. We can adapt, it won’t affect our preparation,” Wallabies Coach Ewen McKenzie said.
“It’s a back scratching exercise. We’ll find the best outcome for everyone.”
While McKenzie hadn’t yet worked out the exact timing of when the camp will start early next week, he said it would only be a minor adjustment and was confident their late arrival would actually assist plans to win back the Bledisloe for the first time since 2002.
“We definitely want to have a presence in the (Super Rugby) final. It’s great that they’re mixing and flying the flag for Australia,” the former Queensland Reds director of coaching said.
“It gives us a bunch of guys coming in who are in-form that are match hardened.”
While McKenzie remained tight-lipped on the Brumbies players who had improved their chances for a Wallabies jumper in the historic win against the Bulls, he spoke of the exception he made for including France-bound utility forward Peter Kimlin in the squad.
After being left out of the Wallabies squad for four years since his two Tests in 2009, Kimlin was the only player picked who is off to play European rugby at the end of the year.
McKenzie is sending the 28-year-old a clear message his services would still be appreciated in Australia ahead of the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
“The other guys were all incumbent players in a Test team and they still chose to go,” he said.
“He reluctantly decided to leave and when I spoke to him I sensed that.”
The Brumbies are aiming to snuff out a second blossoming dynasty in as many weeks in a bid to become Super Rugby’s second most successful franchise behind the Crusaders.
Five of Super Rugby’s six title-winning teams made the finals this year, of which two of the three most successful – the Crusaders and Bulls – were knocked out in tight semi-final contests by the Chiefs and the Brumbies over the weekend.
A win in Saturday’s final against the Chiefs in Hamilton would elevate the fourth-best Brumbies to Super Rugby’s second most successful franchise with three championship wins and three runners-up finishes.
That would place them only behind seven-time champions the Crusaders.
In one fell swoop, the Brumbies would leapfrog both the Blues and the Bulls.
But first they’ll need to beat the defending champion Chiefs, who are in the midst of developing their own Super Rugby dynasty.
“The Crusaders have really dominated Super Rugby and every franchise is now trying to do that,” Brumbies coach Jake White said.
“The Chiefs are trying to do it. The Brumbies are trying to do it. The Bulls have done it for a while now.
“Everyone aspires to it and it’s that sort of achievement that you want to try and get to.”
But in order to do so, the Brumbies will have to back up their surprise win against the Bulls in Pretoria by accomplishing several feats no Australian or South African side has ever managed in the competition’s 18-year history.
That includes winning any type of finals match in New Zealand, winning a decider in a foreign country, winning a final after finishing outside the top two and winning a final after crossing the Indian Ocean in the lead-up week. - AAP
[ Source: Australian Times ]