May the better front row prevail

There are times when the scoreboard is of secondary importance to frontrowers.

The marketeers will tell you today’s Super Rugby match between the Hurricanes and Crusaders in Christchurch is massive. It’s not and neither team’s season will be determined by the outcome.

Winning would be helpful, but a loss far from terminal.

For the Hurricanes’ props, particularly, there’s more at stake than the result anyway. They judge their worth as players on the strength of how they fare on their annual trip to AMI Stadium.

‘‘They’re bloody powerful and they’re clinical and they’re the benchmark power scrum of the competition. This is what you gear up for all year, as an opposition,’’ Hurricanes prop Ben May said.

Twenty years ago, the Blues’ front row of Olo Brown, Sean Fitzpatrick and Craig Dowd was the one all others were measured against. Since then, though, it’s been the Crusaders, whose coaching and talent identification and personnel have ensured a remarkable run of dominance.

May is a product of the Crusaders’ system, making his Super Rugby debut for them against the Lions in Johannesburg in 2007.

‘‘Combinations in scrums and connections with players week in and week out is huge, so they’ve had a solid score of that scrum together for years,’’ said May, 34.

‘‘They’ve just been building and building and a lot of frontrowers get better with age, to a certain extent, and their frontrowers have been around the traps and played a lot of test match footy.

‘‘Obviously they have good coaching. Their systems, I don’t think, have changed a whole lot. They had [Greg] Somerville and [Campbel] Johnstone and the older guys like that. Dave Hewett. They were all All Blacks as well, so they can produce them.’’

But to keep producing them - in the form of more recent props such as Owen and Ben Franks, Wyatt Crockett and Joe Moody - is some achievement. There have been any number of All Blacks locks churned out too.

It’s all contributed to peerless scrummaging and lineout performances. ’’It’s a big part of their game. They pride themselves on disrupting set piece,’’ May said. ’’I know it’s a big part of Crocky’s [Crockett’s] game and he’s worked bloody hard at it.’’

May and the Hurricanes forwards have worked hard to become known as a set piece team themselves, in the last couple of years. Inevitably it’s backs such as Beauden Barrett who win the majority of the team’s plaudits, but that shouldn’t overshadow the progress made by the pack.

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