Stephen Larkham concedes if the Super Rugby Pacific finals were this weekend, his ACT Brumbies side wouldn’t get the job done.
Lucky for Larkham they’ve got three months to “keep chipping away” at some atypical deficiencies that have been on show in the season’s early weeks.
The next step on their journey is their first trip across the ditch for the season, heading to Dunedin to tackle the Highlanders and shoot for back-to-back wins.
After constant lineout flaws and an attacking display that lacked punch, Larkham said he hoped his side could tick off a few more boxes in NZ.
“We know we’ve got a fair few things to work on at the moment,” he said.
“We identified that coming out of round one, and we realise we can’t get everything into the program straight away.
“So we’re chipping away at all the stuff that we need to refine at the moment.
“We’re just inconsistent … we had issues with the lineout, and we had some issues in defence as well.
“It’s probably not where we’d need to be for a finals campaign, (but) at the start of the season with the performances we’ve had, coming out of the first three rounds with a two-out-of-three record is not a bad result for us.”
Their opponents are riding high after a nail-biting win against the NSW Waratahs, holding on for a 23-21 win last Friday when Tane Edmed missed a 40-metre penalty goal after the siren.
The ACT side gets lock Cadeyrn Neville back from a cut head, although they’ve shifted some front-row punch to the bench, with James Slipper and Lachie Lonergan not set to start.
Younger duo Billy Pollard and Blake Schoupp will start in their place.
The lure of the confidence boost an overseas win might deliver didn’t appeal to Larkham any more than simply continuing his side’s development.
“This is going to be a challenging one in terms of the travel, and it would be nice to get a really good performance,” he said.
“That’s what we’re going to be chasing more than a result. We’ll look for the performance first and then hopefully the result will come.
“It’s a relatively short run into the finals – seven games, then a bye, and then seven games.
“We want to make sure we’re putting our best team out every week, a team we think is capable of winning every week.”
By Alex Mitchell in Canberra
