Watch every second of the 2026 Super Rugby Pacific season live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nClark Laidlaw\u2019s side just need a victory to wrap up top of the table after the Chiefs\u2019 defeat to the Crusaders, but secured yet another winning bonus point, reflecting their dominance.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes have built their title campaign on their blistering starts and this was no different as Josh Moorby scored his 13th of the season inside two minutes.<\/p>\n
The job got significantly harder for the visitors after prop Daniel Lienert-Brown was red-carded for a high shot on Devan Flanders.<\/p>\n
Lienert-Brown collected the flanker high in the neck, forcing Flanders from the field early as the incident was upgraded from a yellow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the Highlanders down to 14, the lethal Hurricanes backline delivered to power them to a 21-0 lead.<\/p>\n
It started when Kini Naholo dived over, followed by a brilliant individual effort from Moorby to set up Flanders’ replacement, Du\u2019Plessis Kirifi.<\/p>\n
Jacob Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens got the Highlanders on the board after out-sprinting Ruben Love to his own grubber.<\/p>\n
But Love answered back instantly with a pair of filthy steps for his first of the year.<\/p>\n
Fellow All Black Timoci Tavatavanawai crossed before half-time to reduce the advantage.<\/p>\n
Both teams found themselves down to 14 to start the second, with Negate Punivai and Xavier Tito-Harris yellow-carded for foul play.<\/p>\n
Naholo took instant advantage with a powerful burst to deliver his second to further their lead. Adam Lennox hit back after sustained pressure on the Hurricanes line, giving the visitors hope.<\/p>\n
But the comeback ended with a double strike, started with a clean break from Brayden Iose straight through the defence.<\/p>\n
Eretara Enari sealed the win with 20 minutes to go after a smart snipe down the short side.<\/p>\n
Lucas Casey got a consolation try for the Highlanders after he was denied earlier in the second half. It came off the back of several scrum penalties against the hosts, leading to Pouri Rakete-Stones sitting down for ten.<\/p>\n
But the night was all about the Hurricanes as they controlled the lead for their 11th victory of the year.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll finish the season against the Crusaders in Christchurch, sitting nine points ahead of the second-place Chiefs.<\/p>\n
As for the Highlanders, their season is over ahead of next week\u2019s bye, potentially dropping to as low as tenth pending results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hurricanes will finish the 2026 Super Rugby Pacific regular season on top after a 45-28 win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,215801,10569,760,85,48013],"class_list":["post-689277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-highlanders","tag-hurricanes","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-super-rugby-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}