Possible 1 v 6 match-ups: Hurricanes v Brumbies, Hurricanes v Crusaders.<\/p>\n
2 Chiefs v 5 Brumbies<\/p>\n
The Chiefs also have a home qualifying final locked in, though remember last year when they lost to the Blues at that stage but still advanced to the semi-finals? These two teams met at the semi-finals last year, while the Brumbies won their most recent outing 33-24 in Canberra in March.<\/p>\n
How it could change: The Brumbies finish the regular season by hosting Moana Pasifika, and can\u2019t be sure what to expect from the bottom-placed team playing possibly their last game. The Brumbies could reach as high as third, currently five points back from the Blues, but would need a bonus-point win, a Blues defeat, and to make up a points difference of 38. It can\u2019t be ruled out.<\/p>\n
Possible 2 v 5 match-ups: Chiefs v Reds, Chiefs v Blues, Chiefs v Crusaders.<\/p>\n
3 Blues v 4 Crusaders<\/p>\n
The Blues are looking to avoid taking a three-game losing streak into the playoffs when they finish the regular season against the Chiefs in Hamilton tomorrow night. They\u2019re too far behind the second-placed Chiefs, but a home playoff game could slip from their grasp. In their favour is that the Chiefs are resting All Blacks Tupou Vaa\u2019i, Samisoni Taukei\u2019aho, Luke Jacobson and Quinn Tupaea. They\u2019ll also have the upper hand in knowing what\u2019s needed to leapfrog the Crusaders, who play a day earlier. The two teams split their matches this season (Blues 29-13, Crusaders 36-20).<\/p>\n
How it could change: A real chance this could flip to a Crusaders home playoff as they play a weakened Hurricanes side tonight. The Crusaders could finish third, fourth, fifth or sixth \u2013 whatever happens, they\u2019re most likely to face another New Zealand team next week.<\/p>\n
Possible 3 v 4 match-ups: Blues v Brumbies, Blues v Reds, Brumbies v Blues, Crusaders v Blues, Crusaders v Brumbies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Possible 1 v 6 match-ups: Hurricanes v Brumbies, Hurricanes v Crusaders. 2 Chiefs v 5 Brumbies The Chiefs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[617,64,63,22806,3925,5386,5393,8842,10680,2649,16308,38860,1899,297512,10569,16371,38065,10956,16309,3173,166324,3607,760,161,85,23180,1643,85271,10020,320,44944,8684,3853],"class_list":["post-700805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-and","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-been","tag-blues","tag-chiefs","tag-could","tag-decided","tag-face","tag-final","tag-finals","tag-finish","tag-have","tag-heading","tag-hurricanes","tag-into","tag-order","tag-pacific","tag-playoffs","tag-race","tag-regular","tag-round","tag-rugby","tag-season","tag-sports","tag-still","tag-super","tag-table","tag-teams","tag-the","tag-they","tag-where","tag-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700805","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=700805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}