Super Rugby 2015: Storylines to Follow in Playoff Qualifiers

The knockout phase of Super Rugby kicks off this weekend with the first playoffs set to determine the semi-finalists.

The Highlanders entertain the Chiefs in an all-Kiwi encounter, while the Stormers host the Brumbies in Cape Town, South Africa, for the right to face the Waratahs.

The unpredictable nature of the tournament makes forecasting the winners of either tie a difficult task, with the form book often providing little help when it comes to sudden-death rugby.

Here are the storylines that may provide a few pointers.

The all-New Zealand playoff between the Highlanders and the Chiefs sees two All Black midfield talents face off in a bid to reach the semi-finals.

For the Chiefs, Sonny Bill Williams will be looking to exert his power and sublime offloading skill set on his side’s attacking opportunities.

He lines up in the Waikato side’s midfield with his cousin, the electric Tim Nanai-Williams, who can rip teams apart on his own if in the mood.

But this is not the first-choice combination for the 2012 and 2013 champions. Sonny Bill’s regular partner, Charlie Ngatai, is ruled out with concussion.

Across from this family double act, Malakai Fekitoa will be in the No. 13 jersey for the Highlanders. The 23-year-old had a breakthrough year in 2014 but has been hampered by injury of late.

The contrast between the two’s strengths will be an interesting facet of Saturday’s clash. Williams is all about busting the gain line with direct lines of running and looking for those flip-passes to unlock defences.

Fekitoa has lightning-fast feet to get around defenders in tight areas, and he is most effective as a broken field runner. How much we see of either man’s best qualities will depend on who gets the most front-foot ball from their pack.

Looking for pointers from these two's previous records? It depends how far back you want to go. The Highlanders have not won a game in the post-season since 1999.

The Chiefs have been to the summit and planted their flag in two of the past three seasons.

Bring history bang up to date, however, and it tells us the men from Dunedin have done the double over the Chiefs this season.

Even that isn’t enough to convince the New Zealand Herald’s Wynne Gray, who cites the two penalty tries the Chiefs scrum squeezed from their opponents scrum in their first meeting of the campaign and writes:

The bulk of expectation will sit with the Chiefs - twin champions, the poster-boys for selection smarts who have such an innovative and hard-edged coaching group.

They lost last year's playoff to the Brumbies in Canberra, now they are away once more facing a similar obstacle. Two falls against the same foe are two looks at how to come up with a solution.

Keep your eye on the scrums, then, and perhaps for the Chiefs to play a conservative game plan, kicking for field position and using their superior pack to contain All Blacks Brodie Retallick and Sam Cane and suppress the home side.

Having wrapped up the South African conference, Stormers boss Allister Coetzee withdrew almost his entire first-choice line-up for the Cape Town side’s final regular-season game with the Sharks.

They lost and, in doing so, missed the chance to usurp the Waratahs as the second-ranked side in the overall table and get a week off.

But it was a calculated move designed to ensure his front-line troops are rested and raring to go when the Brumbies arrive this Saturday.

The thinking, says Georgina Robinson in the Canberra Times, could be inspired by a move by Bulls coach Frans Ludeke five years ago:

Heading into a redundant round 14 clash with conference rivals the Stormers, Ludeke rested 14 of his top players. It paid off handsomely. The B-side Bulls were thumped 38-10 in Cape Town that week, but with their star line-up restored they stormed back from a halftime deficit to beat the Crusaders 39-24 at home in the semi-final. Fast forward to 2015 and Coetzee arguably has more to gain by using the tactic. He essentially gave his top players the week off denied to them by their third-place finish and the intricacies of the Super Rugby finals format.

The debate over rest or continuity is well rehearsed.

It was the case in the English domestic game when the playoff format was introduced that the team winning the league and having one or two weeks off before the final went in undercooked and got thumped.

The system has since been tweaked, with no fallow week for the winners of the league, and yet as we saw this season, first-place Northampton didn't even make the final.

A coach is judged by results, and Coetzee's plan in this scenario will be no different.

The Stormers have openly admitted they will have to come up with a plan to stop the Brumbies’ driving maul on Saturday if they are to succeed, per Gavin Rich on SuperSport:

The Stormers used to be feared for their driving maul from the lineout, and there was a stage when it was their staple method of scoring tries. Their potency in that department has waned as coincidentally their scrumming has improved. What has become of even more concern to the Stormers though is how ineffectual they’ve at times been when it comes to combating the driving maul of opposing teams.

Indeed, their players have spent time in training working out how to deal with the threat as flanker Siya Kolisi told SuperSport: "We have seen how many tries the Brumbies have scored with their driving maul so it will be vital for us to improve our maul defence as we have leaked a couple of tries in that area this season."

The irony is that this newfound strength for the Canberra men has a South African at its roots.

The improvement in this facet of their game can be traced back to World Cup-winning Springbok coach Jake White’s short tenure at the franchise.