Canes must work the 'spider' right

BY TOBY ROBSON

The Hurricanes must come to terms with the hardest job in rugby or they will continue to be a good team frustrated.

It is an area that has become all the more imperative ahead of tomorrow's match against the Stormers in Cape Town and it's no mistake that Hurricanes coach Colin Cooper has re-jigged his loose trio for the umpteenth time.

Openside Scott Waldrom is back in place of Karl Lowe and his instructions should be to leave the ball alone at the tackle and do his best to walk through the ruck in a move players are now referring to as a "spider".

The Hurricanes have persisted in trying to attack the ball through the opening month of the competition and had some success in disrupting their opponents flow.

Increasingly though, referees have cracked down on any attempts to disrupt clean ball and the Hurricanes have become serial offenders.

Cooper puts the rotation of his flankers down to "managing workloads," but clearly nobody has mounted a compelling case to play every week without question.

The Reds showed the effectiveness of simply crabbing through the gate in their win over the Chiefs and Waldrom, and No8 Rodney So'oialo in particular, must master the art in Cape Town where he will go head-to-head with Schalk Burger.

"I think seven is probably the toughest position in rugby at the moment," Cooper said yesterday.

"Not only do they have to be tough, but they have to be smart.

"Lowe gave two penalties away [against the Cheetahs] and I question both of them. Both of them were saying he didn't come through the gate."

It seems the gate becomes less relevant if players leave the ball alone and leave it to the second arriving player.

The breakdown has been an issue for the Hurricanes in attack too after the Cheetahs cleverly left tackled players alone meaning there were no offsides in Bloemfontein.

Cooper said he was hopeful referee, Nathan Pearce, would create more clarity around the formation of a ruck and not allow players to linger in offside positions.

"It's if they go in then pull out. If they go into the ruck they can't come out, that's what I'm disputing.

"If they go in there is a ruck and an offside line. I think we just have to keep working and adapting to that new variation there."

Whatever the case Cooper admits the Stormers match has become more important in the wake of last week's loss to the Cheetahs.

The Stormers have stuck to the starting side that demolished the Highlanders with a mix of wide-running rugby and grinding forward play.

Cooper is steeling his forwards to defend lineout drives where the Stormers have mounted many attacks this season around big lock Andries Bekker.

"It's a major strength of theirs so we've got a plan [to stop it]. We did well when Jeremy [Thrush] got yellow-carded and the Cheetahs went for a drive and we stopped it pretty well with a man down.

"It comes down to attitude really, how you stop those drives, and we need to be a little smarter than we were last week.

"But we have the advantage that we've been in South Africa a week, we are back at sea level, and most of the guys sleeping patterns are back to normal.

"And there is a real edge after the loss last week, so those are good signs for us."

- © Fairfax NZ News