Rugby Review is a new series debuting for The Dropkicks. Put simply, it's a way of following a team through the fans eyes. Are Crusaders fans really one-eyed? Have Highlanders fans lost all hope? You'll follow the team through 5 fans. I'm looking for someone to do the

Blues each week, so please leave a comment if you want to do this!

The Chiefs: By long-time friend of The Dropkicks, Richard Irvine

John Mitchell talks you through the Chiefs vs Western Force.

G'day. I'm John Mitchell. You may remember me from 'sitting next to Clive Woodward like a sack of wet sand' and 'I can't believe the All Black coach hasn't been sacked yet!'. That one came out in 2003. So the Chiefs played the Force on Saturday night; I have fond memories of Waikato and the Chiefs - I had hair then - so I want to see them do well. On the other hand, the Force are a pack of whinging little bitches, and I want to see their hearts ripped out, piled on the 22, then set on fire.

Just joking!

Luckily, the Chiefs came to the party and bitchslapped them. Good one. If those Aussies hadn't gone all Lord Of The Flies on me, they'd be the fucking Crusaders by now. I think the lesson in this match is "This is what happens when you fuck Mitch in the arse". For the Chiefs, who are three from three, I think the lesson is "Watch your back" - life plays some fucked up hands, and just when your career is going great, there are ALWAYS people out there wanting to stick a knife in your back. Always. Take it from Mitch, I know.

The Crusaders by Ti'i Paulo's 'special nutritionist' As predicted, it was a good week for the Crusaders. They played the Sharks, at home, on Friday night and I was much more pleased by their performance. The Crusaders had not been defeated by a South African Super Rugby team at home since 1996, and I was glad to see this remain.

The game was light-years better than last week’s game, against the Reds. There wasn’t anything overly spectacular about the game. It was just a good game of rugby. It was such a massive improvement, it was like watching a completely different team!

As I have left this review to the last minute, I’m just going to sum up the Crusaders' ROUND THREE

Richie, AKA God, is back.

Outstanding scrums.

Up at half time: Ten – Six.

Never would've known we lost so badly last week.

Dan Carter overtook Matt Burke on the all-time Super rugby scorer’s list. (Now 3rd)

Thirty five – Six: Final Score.

Hottie, Zac Guildford: Multiple tries. One intercept try.

Runaway ending. Two tries in 10minutes.

Epically annihilating tackles.

Exceptional crowd attendance.

I'm looking forward to much of the same in Round Four.

Hurricanes, by me

King Carlos came to town and he brought the Clever kid. 'Los didn't do a hell of a lot - and got a lot of sledging thrown his way from those in the crowd - and I'm not sure what people expected him to do anyway. Lining up outside it looked like there'd be an amazing crowd - it took us 20m to get in in the first place. But it wasn't. It was an ok crowd, but surely not much more than 16,000.

If you could look up the Hurricanes on unencyclopedia, this would be the match that accompanied it, with this blurb.

The Hurricanes are a team based in Wellington, New Zealand. They play their home games at the Biscuit Tin. The Hurricanes have historically been a team with a lot of promising talent, but often that talent has been squandered in favour of white line fever. This sports team simply refuses to learn the basics, opting instead for flashy, 50/50 ball play [which is more often than not 20/80].

The February 27, 2010 match against the Lions was the personification of this. The Lions were not fancied to win this game, as they have been shown to have a weak defence. The Hurricanes decided to exploit this by trying to set up 60m solo tries, instead of getting the team to work together to get 4 quick tries - securing a bonus point - and then resort to flashy football.

We're off to South Africa for three weeks, minus Conrad and Tamati this week, and the Pig for a season.

Oh, and can I say the Seal Slayer's try against the Lions was amazing and hilarious. Best bit of rugby satire I've ever seen.

The Highlanders, by Jimmy. 

This game is the first one this year that's highlighted what for me is the major deficiency of "Super" rugby. Waking up at 4am on a Sunday is hard. You might wonder why I was waking up at 4am? Well, try as I might I just couldn't find a replay of the game being shown at a reasonable hour on Sunday. There were replays of the Crusaders' game, which you may recall was played at NZ time, and replays of the Blues' game which finished well before midnight. So someone at Sky clearly doesn't think anyone wants to watch the Highlanders play at a normal time of the day.*

The scheduling of the kickoff in the afternoon can't have helped either, it would have made more sense to have a night game in Africa, which I think could have been 6:30am here in New Zealand. These crazy time zone differences are why I got really excited by the idea of changing Super rugby to being more of a Champions League type competition, which would help to limit the amount of time players have to spend miles away from home. That, or just ditching the Africans from the competition and playing with Pacific and Asian teams; though I suppose that would probably kill the presumably big earner of the Tri-Nations.

Anyway, all of that is by the by, because I haven't been asked to deliver a state of the Union, but rather a fan's perspective of Highlanders games, so I should probably crack into it. The Highlanders won!!! I don't think they won pretty, and maybe they were robbed of a bonus point, but bagging 4 points in Africa is a big achievement at any stage; even if the win is agains the Cheetahs who apparantely haven't won back to back since they returned to the comp.

I couldn't believe the investment the Highlanders were making in Hobbs when they have Robbie Robinson in the squad, but the guy has sure proven me wrong. He's put in solid performances in the first 3 rounds, and scored 4 tries to boot. I think the balance of the team with Shoemark at 12 (surely he's more natural there than at centre, what with his good kicking game?) and Lynn at 13 was great. As awesome as Jayden Hayward can be, I think he's a little too inconsistent at this level yet, and having a relative veteran like Shoemark outside Hobbs must surely be a calming influence on him.

However, I also liked the tactic of bringing Berquist on at the end to calm the tempo and keep the Cheetahs pushed back in their own half - that backline trio might be a good starting trio against some of the teams that can control their game better than the Cheetahs. Then you can bring Lynn on for Berquist and push Hobbs in one to up the tempo in the last 30 minutes.

Having praised the win, I did have some questions about the tactics the backs employed a lot of the night. It doesn't seem to me that the new rules make kicking possession away constantly a good idea. While Ben Smith had a great Air NZ Cup campaign last year, that hasn't yet translated into Super 14 form, so putting bombs up constantly basically means only Dagg is going to be able to get up in the air & compete for the ball. Dagg by the way, had a reasonably good game, especially with the added responsibility of having the goal kicking duties.

My only other comment on the backs, is that Jimmy Cowan had, by his standards, an average game. A couple of kicks went awry and he just wasn't his usual sharp and decisive self. Jimmy is awesome, and not just because he shares my name. I think its great how he shook off all of that (admittedly fairly self-inflicted) crap, and has really stood up and made the most of the opportunities he's had. Here's hoping he's back to his best next week, because the Highlanders need him at top form.

The forwards had solid games for the most part - I don't think they were being out-scrummed, but rather that the referee was allowing some fairly iffy tactics from the Cheetahs front row. The loose forwards were solid, and though Thompson looked a bit out of place at times at No 8, I like the additional pace that the trio had. Up against Smith & Broussow I think the really held their own. Its interesting how the effectiveness of Broussow has been nullified by the new rules - last year he might have earnt his team 10 penalties from his efforts at the breakdown, but now with the law being interpreted correctly (ok, differently) he had a quiet game.

Apart that is, from scoring the first of 3 tries to be sent to the TMO, and the one that I thought was the most obviously not a try. The ball hit the ground, but to my eyes at least he had clearly lost control of it prior to that. Smith's try I would have given the benefit of the doubt to, even though you couldn't actually see it hitting the ground - but the 'daylight' between ball and line for Thompson's disallowed try wasn't visible on my telly.

So, robbed of a bonus point, but 4 points in the bag in their first fixture in Africa. The Stormers should be a tougher prospect, but a winnable game - and if the improvements continue week to week the Bulls might be a competitive game. But coming up against a team that's had a nice break with the Bye week, I think im being overly optimistic there! Anyway, this is one pretty chuffed 'almost' fan!

* I'm willing to admit that i'm either blind or stupid and there may have been a replay that I just couldn't find when searching the Sky website. But to be fair, when I entered 'Highlanders' into their search box, only one result showed, and that was for a replay of a game in the future anyway. So, instead of a handy search feature I had to scroll manually through their fugly TV Guide thing, which is slow so I gave up after getting to Tuesday.