POWER-HOUSE: Liam Messam says the Chiefs' forwards can get better ahead of their clash with the reds.
Good planning and preparation netted the Chiefs their Super 14 upset win over the Crusaders last Friday night and assistant coach Craig Stevenson believes it is crucial to do the same thing again this week against the Queensland Reds.
"We didn't train physically last week in terms of smashing and bashing each other," Stevenson, the man in charge of the Chiefs pack, said.
"We did a lot of preparation and worked on a few plans that we wanted to put on the park, both attacking and defensively and both in set piece and in our driving play."
They had gone into the Crusaders match knowing they had to be at their best to compete because of the sheer quality of the opposition.
"They've got the best scrum in the competition, they've got two good locks and their lineout's been functioning well.
"We knew we had to be up for it and I thought we brought a lot of physicality to the game and also followed a game plan both at lineout and scrum time, which I thought worked very well."
That game plan was based on careful study of the opposition and areas they thought they could exploit, planning that Stevenson said again had to be done this week, even though the Reds were nine places and 22 points behind the Crusaders on the points table.
"We just have to be real, we need to keep our feet on the ground and keep doing what we've been doing.
"We need to be doing our analysis really well and to be honest there's a lot to play for this week because it's our last home game in the round-robin."
Stevenson rated the Reds as a good side who were hard to beat when they came to play and possessed a big pack.
"They've got some raw aggression in there. They're probably not the most technical pack but they don't give up and they've got a lot of power and physicality in their front row and locks.
"They've also got probably one of the form sevens and one of the hardest sevens over the ball in the competition in (David) Croft, so we know that if we're not anywhere near our best we could come second and that's not what we want."
Four or five weeks ago they had put a plan in place of where they wanted to be and this week was just another step in that plan.
"That means a lot of analysis and working on our individual techniques, because at this stage of the competition you don't need to train for hours and hours and hours.
"It's about being smart and it's about preparation," Stevenson said.
The hopeful injury report at the start of the week took a nosedive yesterday with the status of halfback Brendon Leonard (bruised knee) and prop Simms Davison (strained gluteus muscle) changing.
They were kept out of training as a precautionary measure and are now in doubt for this weekend due to slow progress with their injuries that hampered them on Friday. Second five Callum Bruce, who missed the Crusaders game after suffering an ankle/foot injury kicking a ball in training, came through yesterday morning's session and was then rested in the afternoon with a decision to be made tomorrow on his availability.
Lock Jono Gibbes, who started the season as captain but has missed most of it with a torn hamstring and then an aggravation of a previous knee injury, returned to team training yesterday.
Flanker Tanerau Latimer was sidelined yesterday after having a fragment of metal removed from his eye but was expected to be back tomorrow.
