Chiefs vs Reds: Super XV round 18 – Super Rugby match recap
Reds registered their record 13th win in the Super Rugby season after they defeated the New Zealand Super Rugby franchise Chiefs 19 – 11 on Saturday, June 18 at Waikato Stadium Hamilton. Chiefs and Reds were playing their last game of the 2011
Super Rugby competition’s round-robin matches.
Reds topped the Super XV combined table and the Australian Conference table with 66 points coming from their 16 matches in the season so far. They have also booked a semi-final spot and will play the big game of the season on July 2nd at Suncorp
Stadium, Brisbane.
Chiefs on the other hand finished at the bottom of the New Zealand conference and tenth in the combined table with 40 points coming from their six wins out of the 16 games in the season.
After all the off the field drama caused by the change in flight schedules due to the ash cloud covering most of Australia, started the match strongly. Reds were on the go from the start of the match and scored their first points of the match in the fifth
minute of the game through their flanker Liam Gill. Reds fly half Quade Cooper followed with his conversion to put the visitors in the lead by seven points.
Chiefs lock, Romana Graham, was sin binned in the 16th minute of the game and that earned the Reds a penalty. Cooper successfully kicked the penalty to extend the lead by 10 points. Chiefs managed to restrict Reds from scoring with a man down
but at the same time weren’t able to create a scoring move.
In the last 10 minutes of the first-half, Chiefs retained ball possession and started to gain territory and control the game. Chiefs scored twice before the end of the first half courtesy of their fly half Stephen Donald’s 31st and 36th
minute penalties respectively.
Reds lead the game by four points starting the second-half strongly and extended their lead with Cooper’s 51st minute penalty goal. Reds were impressive in their defence as they denied Chiefs from gaining easy space and errors to capitalise on. Cooper
followed with two successive penalties in the 57th and 59th minute of the game to take the scorecard reading to 19 – 6 in favour of Reds.
Chiefs tried hard to secure the losing bonus points but the impressive Reds denied them from easy scoring opportunities by restricting their own mistakes. Chiefs number eight, Fritz Lee, scored a try in the 77th minute of the game to reduce the
lead to just eight points. Chiefs later failed to gain on the conversion that cost them their losing bonus points of the match.
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