Anxiety for Cooper and Nucifora
Sat, 17 May 2008 10:48
Hurricanes coach Colin Cooper and his Blues counterpart David Nucifora face an anxious wait on their teams' possible Super 14 semifinal status .
The Blues beat the Hurricanes 19-17 in Auckland on Friday to keep their playoff hopes alive, whilst the Hurricanes scrambled a losing bonus point to take themselves to 41 points and remain, temporarily at least, in second place.
The Hurricanes will be wary of the fact they could potentially be passed by the Waratahs, Stormers and Sharks before the weekend is out - and shut out of the semifinals.
Cooper said: "little things didn't go our way... we had a couple of opportunities where maybe we could have got a penalty, but we didn't get it. We move on now, and sit and wait."
Nucifora said: "We've got to be realistic. It's going to be tough. We're going to need a couple of results you'd call upsets to happen now."
"We always knew we could be in one of any number of positions," said Nucifora. "The first thing is we've got to celebrate the success of the game, because that's pretty important.
"I thought our guys were just outstanding. To be able to come back from 14-3 down and win that game in the manner they did was something I'm pretty proud of. This team couldn't have done that a few years ago."
"It was an outstanding game of football. Both teams played very well, and we played extremely well I thought. We've got to celebrate that first, now we just hold on. We’re still alive, still breathing, and we'll see what happens," Nucifora said.
A frustrating night, then, for both sides who for now sit inside the top four but are also vulnerable to the challenge of the chasing pack.
