'No better challenge' says White as Brumbies set up Chiefs clash

ACT Brumbies captain Nic White is relishing his team's Super Rugby Pacific semi-final clash against a domineering Waikato Chiefs after victory over the Wellington Hurricanes on Saturday ensured they are the only Australians left in the competition.

The Brumbies will travel to New Zealand as underdogs to face a Chiefs side that has lost only once so far this season and that handed the Queensland Reds a 29-20 defeat to move into the last four. "There's no better challenge, that's the one you want," White said of the impending meeting in Hamilton.

"Coming into this game, watching the footie today and seeing who the potential line-ups are going to be, you're hoping to get a chance to go over and test yourself. "That's what we want, that's what we've been preparing for all year. We'll enjoy this tonight and we're pretty confident."

The Brumbies advanced after a narrow 37-33 win over the Hurricanes, which was only confirmed in the dying seconds when Ardie Savea's late attempt to secure a match-winning try was denied by the hand of Brumbies loose forward Luke Reimer. That brought a dramatic conclusion to a hard-fought contest and White believes his teammates are reaping the benefits of a challenging campaign.

"We went down early and throughout the whole year we've spoken about the regular season as a chance for us to get a lot of tests and learn from them and when the tests have come we're ready," he said. "We leant on our learnings from the season pretty hard and I thought we adapted pretty well. In the second half we came out and had to adapt pretty quickly as things weren't going right.

"It's important that we celebrate this over the next little while, and then rest, recover and get stuck into the review because there's plenty to learn from."