From sport one in all Super Rugby Pacific 2025, the Chiefs have seemed like champions-in-waiting.
They started their marketing campaign with what was, ultimately, a run-in-the-park victory in opposition to the defending champion Blues. What struck about that opening 25-14 win was the best way the Chiefs stacked their bench with expertise and expertise and performed to an orchestrated plan.
They appeared to flick a change halfway by the second half once they moved Damian McKenzie from full-back to first-five and unleashed the bomb squad of Tupou Vaa’i, Cortez Ratima, Anton Lienert-Brown and Emoni Narawa.
There was one thing deeply symbolic about it because the final time the Chiefs had performed at Eden Park, eight months earlier within the 2024 Tremendous Rugby Pacific closing, they have been wiped 41-10 and barely featured in a sport the place that they had simply 30 per cent possession.
It was a desperately disappointing evening for a Chiefs crew that had felt the sting of defeat on the similar stage in 2023, once they couldn’t maintain on, at their residence floor, in opposition to a Crusaders crew that surged to a late win on the again of their driving maul.
“We barely fired a shot,” head coach Clayton McMillan mentioned after dropping final yr’s closing. “That was disappointing for boys who put in lots of work, disappointing for the followers who travelled up State Freeway. We’ve obtained some nice younger males. We’ll get higher and finally win one. There’s little doubt in my thoughts about that.”
Clearly, the Chiefs got here into 2025 hungry, organised and rejuvenated. McMillan and his teaching group clearly spent the low season refining and modifying all the pieces, totally dedicated to making sure that they make it third time fortunate this yr.
A number of the rugby the Chiefs have performed has been on a distinct degree to everybody else and certainly to something they produced in 2023 and 2024.
Their efficiency on opening day made the Blues look stale, unsure and maybe a bit responsible of not adapting and rising sufficient within the wake of their championship win. And that theme has solely amplified because the season has gone on. The Chiefs have seemed probably the most progressive and polished crew within the competitors.
Their factors differential of 231 was crazily out of whack – massively larger than the Crusaders, Brumbies and Hurricanes – and it displays simply how nicely they’ve attacked this season, utilizing each Josh Jacomb and McKenzie at No 10, to ignite the ending abilities of a backline that has a ridiculous depth of expertise.
A number of the rugby the Chiefs have performed has been on a distinct degree to everybody else and certainly to something they produced in 2023 and 2024. They’ve developed and refined all their key areas, and so they have hardened their resolve to not settle for performances that they really feel don’t meet their expectations.
There have solely been three of these in 2025, the final one coming 5 weeks in the past the place they have been crushed 35-17 by the Hurricanes and seemed a bit ragged by the top.
It was a stunning departure of type and Chiefs midfielder Quinn Tupaea revealed how the crew responded to that loss in Wellington.
“We sat within the change rooms after the Hurricanes sport and listened to them sing their music subsequent door,” he mentioned. “Clayton turned our speaker off, and all of us sat there and listened to it, and it type of fuelled us for this week. We had a troublesome evaluation on Monday and two robust trainings on Tuesday and Thursday, which I suppose ready us nicely for this weekend.”
After listening to the Hurricanes whoop and holler the week earlier than, the Chiefs bounced again the next week to defeat the Crusaders 35-17 in Christchurch and put themselves on the high of the desk, the place they’ve completed.
They’re chasing one thing greater than redemption and a Tremendous Rugby title The Chiefs are doubtlessly setting themselves as much as construct a dynasty ought to they handle to be topped champions this yr.
However there’s a definitive sense that the Chiefs have realized to not really feel something about topping the desk. They completed first in 2023 however couldn’t win the ultimate. They completed fourth in 2024 however couldn’t win the ultimate and they also know that the place they end doesn’t matter – the job just isn’t finished in late Could. The job just isn’t finished by reaching the ultimate.
The Chiefs know, maybe in a method they beforehand by no means have, that their entire season has been gearing as much as this stage, and that in the event that they wish to be topped champions, they’ve to search out one other degree once more over the following three weeks.
However as this season has performed out, it’s additionally change into obvious that 2025 has developed monumental significance for the membership. They’re chasing one thing greater than redemption and a Tremendous Rugby title.
The Chiefs are doubtlessly setting themselves as much as construct a dynasty ought to they handle to be topped champions this yr.
They’ll lose McMillan as their head coach – he’s off to Munster – however what he has finished is about the membership as much as succeed lengthy after he has gone. He resurrected the membership in 2021, following their nightmare 2020 which noticed them lose all eight Tremendous Rugby video games below Warren Gatland within the truncated New Zealand-only competitors.
McMillan stepped up in 2021 when Gatland was away with the British and Irish Lions and gave the membership a way of identification and new power – a lot in order that when the latter returned in 2022, he was pushed upstairs right into a director of rugby function, earlier than agreeing to then return to educate Wales.
The McMillan period has seen the Chiefs have produced a consistency of efficiency they haven’t managed since Dave Rennie took over and received titles in 2012 and 2013.
What profitable the title will do for the Chiefs is validate the sweeping fashion of rugby they’ve employed, the depth of their resilience, the power of their crew tradition, and their capability to adapt and be taught from adversity.
The squad, with out query, has the required expertise, stability, uncooked expertise and longevity to ascertain the Chiefs as a dynasty membership.
A title will set the Chiefs as much as maintain what McMillan has constructed and doubtlessly go on to construct a dynasty the identical method the Crusaders did between 2017 and 2023.
Every little thing is in place for the Chiefs to go on to dominate Tremendous Rugby. They’ve signed the likes of McKenzie, Vaa’i, Samisoni Taukei’aho, Luke Jacobson and Wallace Sititi to long-term contracts and so they have a cohort of rising gamers resembling Jacomb, Ratima, Simon Parker and Tupaea who’re additionally locked in.
The squad, with out query, has the required expertise, stability, uncooked expertise and longevity to ascertain the Chiefs as a dynasty membership.
And whereas McMillan is leaving, it’s already an open secret that he will probably be changed by former La Rochelle director of rugby Jono Gibbes.
Gibbes has not but been confirmed however his former Chiefs team-mate Stephen Donald appeared to by chance reveal the information on Sky’s breakdown present. “I don’t know if it’s been introduced however there’s a man within the constructing who has coached on the highest degree in Jono Gibbes, who’s a like-for-like,” mentioned Donald. “If it’s Jono for instance, it’s a straightforward transition.”
Gibbes, who joined the Chiefs teaching workers as an assistant this yr, is seen as a person minimize from totally comparable fabric to McMillan. He’s robust and uncompromising, unwilling to just accept requirements beneath expectation and fully able to driving a tradition of excellence.
Profitable the title this yr is not going to solely exorcise demons, however it is going to give Gibbes a longtime template from which to work, fairly than having to rebuild the membership from the bottom up as McMillan needed to.
That’s to not say it is going to be a straightforward journey for Gibbes, however he will probably be inheriting the strongest squad in Tremendous Rugby and a gaggle of gamers who know what it takes to win a title.
The following three weeks for the Chiefs will, subsequently, decide far more than how the McMillan period is written into historical past. They could possibly be the important thing to the Chiefs turning into Tremendous Rugby’s most dominant drive over the following decade.
