Two forgettable Fijian Drua moments from fullback Ilaisa Droasese have let the Chiefs off the hook before they marched to a commanding 42-22 win to close Super Round.<\/p>\n
The Chiefs jumped back into equal first place with the Hurricanes with Sunday’s bonus-point win, the fifth Super Rugby Pacific game in three days at a heaving One NZ Stadium in Christchurch.<\/p>\n
But at 14-10 midway through the first half, it was much tighter as the Drua threatened multiple times to go ahead.<\/p>\n
Having already beaten ladder leaders the Hurricanes and the Brumbies twice this season, the Drua were poised to add another scalp and do the Brumbies and Reds – back in fifth and sixth place – a huge favour in the race to finals.<\/p>\n
But Frank Lomani was taken into touch attempting to score, then Droasese produced a bizarre moment that opened the floodgates.<\/p>\n
After collecting a loose ball deep in his in-goal area, the fullback inexplicably grubbered ahead, straight into the path of gleeful prop Jared Proffit.<\/p>\n
He did enough to ground the ball for a head-scratching try.\u00a0<\/p>\n
From the restart a potential knock-on was overlooked, before Cortez Ratima’s try blew out what had been a tight contest.<\/p>\n
Droasese then stumbled as he exited his in-goal area in the second half, spilling the ball into an oncoming Chiefs player for what appeared to be another inexplicable try.<\/p>\n
It was waved away when replays showed he had grounded the ball as he fell, but the Chiefs scored anyway moments later.<\/p>\n
Two late Drua tries gave them brief hope, but the damage had been done.<\/p>\n
“Individual errors that aren’t good enough to beat the Chiefs,” said Drua coach Glen Jackson, who was also critical of the potential knock-on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s not what we’re after, a moment like that … it’s not good enough.<\/p>\n
“Chiefs are a quality team and we had them on the rack quite a few times.”<\/p>\n
The Drua (4-6) scored in the second minute, before the Chiefs’ quick-fire double made it 14-7.<\/p>\n
Setting the tone for the bizarre moments that would follow, the Drua then opted to kick a penalty from a tight angle – rather than seek a try – to make it 14-10.<\/p>\n
“Tough battle, a bit flattered by the scoreboard,” Chiefs coach Jono Gibbs said.<\/p>\n
“We showed glimpses of real control, accuracy and good intent and moments where we drifted.<\/p>\n
“Even with those 35 (points), Drua were always knocking on the door.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two forgettable Fijian Drua moments from fullback Ilaisa Droasese have let the Chiefs off the hook before they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[17909,111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-400780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-chiefs","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}