A disappointing performance against the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein this weekend has seen the Hurricanes lose their first game of the season, and drop to second place in the table. In my completely unbiased and objective (yeah right!) opinion the Hurricanes shouldn’t have lost the game. The Cheetahs had a player sin-binned in the first few minutes for a high tackle, but then somehow managed to avoid having another player sin-binned for an even worse tackle a few minutes later. Then, with 10 minutes to go, Ma’a Nonu was sin-binned for a very inocuous tackle, meaning the Hurricanes had to defend with only 14 players. This gave the Cheetahs a chance to use their (illegal) “truck and trailer” forward drive to perfection to score the winning points.

Still, the Hurricanes managed to get a bonus point for losing by fewer than seven points, and are still in second place on the table. Unfortunately for us, the Crusaders won, beating the Blues (now there was a tough game to know who to cheer for!) moving into first place.