Chiefs v Northern Bulls, Week 9, Super 12 (Waikato Stadium)

This week’s brief

1. Blond Fabio
2. Zane Kurchner
3. Sione Lauaki
4. Items of note

1. Blond Fabio

New Zealand commentator, Scotty ‘Sumo’ Stevenson had put me onto the Blond Fabio trend in South Africa.

Bulls and Springbok inside centre Wynand Olivier was a strong candidate with his dark roots.

2. Zane Kirchner

I had earlier seen a resemblence between the Bulls fullback and Lionel Richie. The short afro was the starting point.

Now that Kirchner has gone with dreadlocks – and after seeing him in the flesh - I was sure there was a cartoon character that had the same hairdo. Sometimes the answers don’t come to me immediately but I usually get there.

Sione Lauak

3. Sione Lauaki – back to corn rolls …

I was interested to see how he would perform against a very physical Bulls pack.

The big All Black is never far from the action
- At best, he is a wrecking ball with great balance and a turn of pace
- At worst, he turns the ball over and gets lost during games (and does stupid things off the field)

His performance was OK. He made a break down the right hand side fo the field in the second half that looked promising.

He did not lose the ball very often and was reasonably decisive with his actions. It can be very frustrating seeing an athlete of his stature fail to just run hard and straight.

It was Kahui who had the drop-sies this week. He had dropped one or two against the Highlanders last week in Mount Maunganui. He was strong on defense, stopping Jason Shoemark at every turn but it is alarming to see an All Black lose the ball in contact like that.

4. Items of note

There were a lot of Bulls fans

The stars were out