By Melissa Woods
While a 27-point win over the Rebels looks good on paper, the ACT Brumbies were far from happy with their opening Super Rugby Pacific match and are out to make amends in Melbourne on Sunday.
The Brumbies will face the Chiefs at AAMI Park as part of Super Round, with all 12 teams in action there over the weekend.
The Chiefs were also first-round winners, exacting some revenge from last year’s grand-final loss to the Crusaders.
Brumbies skipper Allan Alaalatoa said the scoreline against the Rebels at the same venue had flattered his team and they’d identified areas for improvement.
Among the telling statistics the Canberra team missed 42 tackles and conceded a whopping 20 penalties.
“The score was good and we scored some points off some individual brilliance there with Charlie Cale and and Corey Toole, but there’s definitely plenty to work on and that’s something that we’ve touched on throughout the week,” the injured prop told AAP.
“We’re in for a massive game on Sunday – the Chiefs played really well against the Crusaders and that was a great game – so we’ve spoken about a lot of areas that we need to improve that will be key for us.
“Penalties have been a massive point for us especially ones that we can control around the ruck area, so we need to make sure we’re better there because that could definitely hurt us this weekend.
“That’s an area we’ve focused for this match and through the season.”
Playing at No.8, Cale had a breakout Super match scoring two tries including one where the 23-year-old kicked ahead down the sideline and regathered to touch down.
Alaalatoa said he wasn’t surprised by the athleticism of the Dubbo product, who has replaced France-based former Wallaby Pete Samu at the back of the scrum.
“It wasn’t a surprise to me because he’s been delivering that training for the last couple of years and been learning a lot off Pete (Samu) and has been biding his time,” he said.
“Some of the stuff he does, he has a skill-set of another back.”
Rupturing his Achilles during a Bledisloe Cup match last July, Alaalatoa has been working his way back to fitness and said he hoped to start running next week, targeting a return to Super Rugby in late April.
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![Teacher Vanessa Jones has been living in Higgins since 2001, and while she loves the area, she says she is “fed up” with the neglectful ACT government.
The Higgins shops have been completely abandoned, says Vanessa, preventing the opportunity for residents to have a community-centred space to socialise.
They only received bins nine months ago, she says, and requests for a water station and repairs to the bus station have gone unanswered.
“It’s very, very slow,” says Vanessa.
“I asked for the zebra crossing on Fullagar [Crescent] to be repainted, and we had to wait about six or nine months.
“That’s just such a long time… we pay a lot of rates.”
Vanessa says assistance from the government only seems to go to communities with time-rich and assertive communities, leaving places such as Higgins, where the majority of households have both adults working full-time and English may not be the first language of the family, at an automatic disadvantage.
“If you’ve got two people working, paying a mortgage, raising two or three kids, they don’t have the time,” says Vanessa.
Vanessa says the lack of attention quieter places such as Higgins is receiving is starting to look a lot like favouritism.
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