[First filed: May 04, 2007 @ 23:56]
There’s still a very outside chance that if the Reds win against the Bulls in Pretoria (complacency or a well placed lightning bolt might produce a win there but don’t bet on it).
If so, and the Brumbies win very big against the Highlanders tomorrow night then we might yet squeak into the finals. But if you’re feeling that lucky I’d advise buying a lotto ticket.
Keo reports on both the dismal Force game (hard to win without a half back), and the more exciting but very disappointing Chiefs game.
There has been some moaning about the bonus point system, or only having four finalists. At the end of the day the Brumbies knew that tries brought bonus points and chose to spend much of the season playing dour negative rugby. No one to blame but themselves if the teams that went for the tries and scored the bonus points got ahead.
UPDATED: Keo reports on the thrilling game in which the Brumbies fulfilled their side of the bargain with a thrashing of the Highlanders racking up our first ever Dunedin win. Three tries in the first half and then, without George Gregan, just the final score deep in injury time. What a difference driving for the line made!
A possible win by the Stormers over the Sharks, by an unlikely 40+ points could still squeeze us in, as would a much less likely win for the Reds over the Bulls.
But for two games lost in the last minute and a general aversion to try scoring we could have been hosting a home final with what is, in many respects, the strongest ever Brumbies side.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Needing the South African sides to lose I’m very pleased I went to bed around 1am and thus missed four hours of crushing Saffer superiority. The Sharks not only failed to lose big, but the Bulls thought so little of the Reds they decided to fix their for and against difficulties with a 92-3 frolic. All South Afican home finals next week with a high probability one of them will win the tournament.
The SGS view: I thought readers might like to know that Samuel Gordon Stewart is really enjoying our pain:
It’s a glorious day today, for the Brumbies are not in the Super 14 Rugby finals. Despite having lived in Canberra all my life, I do not support the local side, in fact I can’t stand them.
…
This could be why I despise the Brumbies so much…they are the local team and the local media treat them with some bias, and it is something peculiar about Canberra that we have so few local teams that they all get treated with some favourable bias, but I think the Brumbies are a special case. In the NRL the Raiders get some favourable bias, but the media tend to accept that a lot of Canberrans don’t give two hoots about the Raiders and support other teams, however the Brumbies, being one of only two teams within hundreds of kilometres, get treated like they are the entire competition (RiotACT provide roughly the same amount of Brumbies bias as the rest of the local media, see the linked article for an example), they are an annoying waste of excess media time in this town, and I for one just can’t stand them. The news that a thrashing of another team many thousands of kilometres away has directly affected and destroyed their hopes of a finals berth has made my day, and possibly my week!
You and the horse you rode in on Sam.
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