The Hurricanes and the Brumbies will head into Friday's match off the back of two very contrasting performances.
For the Hurricanes, it will be a case of turning around a reasonably heavy defeat to the defending champion Crusaders in Christchurch.
For their opponents, it will be a case of building on the momentum they achieved from their crushing victory over the Chiefs in Canberra.
So impressive was the performance, former Brumbies captain Stephen Hoiles was moved to proclaim it was the club’s finest victory in more than a decade.
It was also quite a remarkable turnaround by the Brumbies given their first-up loss to the Rebels and undoubtedly it would have given the squad a real lift in confidence prior to their trip across the Tasman.
“A lot of the areas that we needed to fix were just around effort and attitude,” Brumbies coach Dan McKellar said after the win over the Chiefs.
“And we’ve got a really good, positive environment around the club here for the last couple of months and we’ve worked hard on that. Despite losing first up we’ve continued to have that, enjoy that, work hard and we put in a performance that we knew we’ve been capable of.”
What was impressive in the Brumbies performance was their ability to attack from any area of the field.
The Hurricanes will be conscious of that and the fact they did not play well in Christchurch.
Assistant coach Jason Holland spoke this week of the need to improve in a lot of areas, especially their start to the match and not giving opposing sides easy points.
It was a message echoed by head coach John Plumtree who has made seven changes to the starting XV from the Crusaders match.
Those changes include the experienced pairing of Beauden Barrett and TJ Perenara, loose forward Ardie Savea and powerful midfielder Ngani Laumape who will get to run on in front of his home province.
"We want to improve a lot of aspects of our play and hopefully we can do that in front of what will be a great crowd in Palmy,” Plumtree said.
"We were really impressed with the performance the Brumbies put out last week so we know the scale of task ahead of us but it's a great challenge for the squad."
The Hurricanes will return to where it all began when they host the Brumbies in Palmerston North in their first Investec Super Rugby home match in 2019.The round three match will be played on Friday, March 1, 23 years to the day the Hurricanes played their first ever Super Rugby match back in 1996. Ticket sales are strong, don't miss out and secure your tickets now. Adults from $20, Kids from $11.50. Click HERE to purchase your tickets.