"The two teams meet each other at contrasting points in their season."

Totally disagree. The tahs have just been playing a very different gameplan than what they played earlier on.

"Canterbury are in absolutely sensational form"

Sensational is overrating them. Their counter attack is deadly like always (hello rico gear), but the hurricanes attack made their D look good. Canterbury has had awful defense all year and has been relying on shootouts. They shouldn't have even topped the table. They scored around 3pts for every 2pts they conceeded, where as the tahs were nearly 2 to 1. Tahs have been the team to beat all year, forget these silly shootouts the crusaders have won.

"Canterbury have a wealth of finals experience, whereas the Waratahs have very little."

I don't think this will be important. tahs have handled the pressure so far with so much expected of them. There will also be less pressure on them since they're in christchurch (ie nobody gies them much of a chance).

"In all fairness to the Hurricances, the Crusdaers should have won by a further 20+ points on Friday night,"

No. It just seems this way because they were all over the canes in the first 20. The difference between the 2 teams was turnovers and attack. Canes weren't even close to being strong enough at the breakdown, and they're attack was flatfooted and made the crusaders D look much better than it really was.

"whereas the Waratahs had a bit of luck in beating the Bulls."

??? I was actually at the game, and we were all over them. Sure Habanna missed the easiest try in history, but that wouldn't have mattered. The tahs had a gameplan and stuck to it and it worked. The 2nd half was all about playing defensively and they did that perfectly.

"but the Waratahs are nowhere near their optimum at the moment, and even that might not be good enough."

Their optimum is better than the crusaders. They don't quite have the same counterattacking power, but better defence. The crusaders were a little lucky in sydney, and the tahs were a bit flat thanks to a long 6 weeks.

Tah's will be able to dictate the pace and style of the game better than the crusaders. First of all, our defence is much better than say the hurricanes. This will slow the crusaders down and make the match more of a grind than what they are used to. NSW are suited better for this because of their better defensive capability and superior lineout (really affects crusaders ability to play field position).

I'm confident that we'll put up a good enough fight that I'm flying over to kiwiland for the match. Ok, the crusaders might win by 20, but if this match was played over and over dozens of times, I think it'll be MUCH closer than what people would expect. 'tahs have a good chance, god I hope they take it (I'm probally gonna die over there anyway, better if I go out a winner )