Rugby-Super Rugby season opens with Crusaders victory

By Andrew Both

BALLARAT, Australia (Reuters) - Ten-time champion Canterbury Crusaders romped to a season-opening 42-32 win over the Wellington Hurricanes as a new era of Super Rugby got underway over the weekend with the addition of two Pacific Island teams.

Only one of the new teams in the competition were able to get their season started, with the Fijian Drua going down 40-10 to the New South Wales Waratahs in Sydney on Friday.

Moana Pasifika's first match against the Auckland Blues, winners of last year's Trans-Tasman Super Rugby competition, was postponed because of an outbreak of COVID-19 in the team camp.

Continuing COVID-19 restrictions affected other matches. The Crusaders and Hurricanes had to endure a four-hour bus ride from Queenstown, where the six New Zealand-based teams in the 12-team competition are in an isolation hub, to play their match in Dunedin on Saturday.

On the pitch, however, it was business as usual for the Crusaders, with winger Leicester Fainga'anuku scoring a hat-trick of tries under floodlights in a near-empty stadium.

"Every time the Crusaders had an opportunity to score, they scored and put points on the board," lamented Hurricanes coach Jason Holland.

The Waikato Chiefs and Otago Highlanders avoided the arduous road journey and played out an entertaining contest on Saturday afternoon in a picturesque Queenstown setting.

All Blacks captain Sam Cane scored the opening try from close range and the twice champion Chiefs led throughout to claim a 26-16 victory.

In Australia, the Fijian Drua performed a Na Bole' pre-match challenge but it was the Waratahs who came away with the win on the back of five tries to end a barren spell of 538 days without tasting victory.

New coach Darren Coleman,