Wellington Hurricanes coach Mark Hammett was delighted to be talking about rugby rather than his own precarious position after his team broke an eight-match Super Rugby losing streak with a victory over South Africa’s Cheetahs.

Three straight defeats to start the season, including a 29-21 home loss to the ACT Brumbies last weekend, had led to calls in the New Zealand media for Hammett’s head to roll.

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His side responded in some style on Saturday evening at Wellington Stadium by snapping the victory drought with nine tries in a 60-27 hammering of the Bloemfontein-based Cheetahs.

Hammett, who is in the final year of his contract, admitted the torrent of points had not quite swept away the memory of the barrage of criticism.

“It has been a tense week. It was interesting going to a press conference with you guys and I didn’t get one rugby question,” he told Fairfax media after the victory.

“Everyone feels that not just myself. The team feels that and I thought they were good in how they fronted.”

The bonus point victory was not enough to pull the Hurricanes off the bottom of the New Zealand conference, where champions Waikato Chiefs rule the roost with a maximum 13 points from their first three matches.

The strength of the Hurricanes’ resurgence will be fully tested when they travel to play New Zealand rivals Otago Highlanders and Canterbury Crusaders over the next two weeks.

Hammett, while conceding the Hurricanes had been poor in the loss to the Brumbies, said the difficulty of opening their campaign with back-to-back matches in South Africa should be taken into account when assessing their start.

“I suppose one of the things out of last week was we actually had one bad game and we talked about the disappointment and the anger that came with putting in a performance like that at home,” he added.

“But leading in to that we’d put up two really good performances in Africa against two really strong South African sides and all of a sudden we had a bad one last week and it was like the blimmin sky had fallen in.”