MacDonald: Good first hitout
Given he is already wading through a minor loose forward crisis, Blues coach Leon MacDonald wasn’t being disingenuous when he delighted in an empty injury ward from their Super Rugby pre-season opener against the Chiefs.
The Blues romped to a 43-10 victory over their southern neighbours in front of a sellout crowd of 4000 in Kaikohe yesterday, with MacDonald putting an injury-free afternoon at the top of his positives list.
‘‘It feels like we played the way we’ve been training,’’ said MacDonald after his side ran in seven tries to two to dominate the early hitout. ‘‘Your anxieties leading into these sort of games are around walking up and nothing comes to fruition. That’s the biggest relief for the coaching group, and then we can keep finetuning and growing it.
‘‘We were also relieved in these games we walked off without an injury, and that is also like gold.’’
MacDonald has already had to call in Northland’s Matt Matich and Auckland’s Adrian Choat as loose forward cover, with cocaptain Blake Gibson out for likely a month with an ankle sprain from the training exercise last Friday. Jed Brown is also on the sideline and Jimmy Tupou is still working back from his ACL, while Dalton Papalii is not available till the opening round under the All Blacks protocols.
MacDonald said there was plenty of work going in behind the scenes to get the All Blacks ready for opening week, which would be a ‘‘case by case’’ decision.
‘‘It is what it is,’’ shrugged MacDonald, echoing identical sentiments from his opposite, Colin Cooper. ‘‘It’s not ideal for them but they’re pros, they’ve played a lot of rugby and they’ll be able to get back in pretty quickly.’’
On the rugby front, the rookie Blues coach was rapt with a preseason opener that saw his forwards edge the collision battle and his backs make the most of their opportunities, none more so than youngster Caleb Clarke who notched a hat-trick of tries.
‘‘He was brilliant today, busy, got his hands on the ball and showed how powerful he is. He’s an exceptional athlete, and I just saw a really confident young man keen to get his hands on the ball.
‘‘We needed the hitout to see where we’re at, and overall we’re pleased with the way we were able to maintain a good pace and stayed pretty close to our structures we’ve practised.
‘‘The collisions was an area we were light on last week, and we fixed that. Both teams were pretty physical, and there will be a few sore bodies.’’
Cooper, who lost Solomon Alaimalo last week with a wrist fracture, wasn’t too distraught with a one-sided scoreboard, all things considered. Most importantly he also appeared to escape any further breakage.
‘‘We had a lot of new faces get an opportunity, and a lot of injured players coming back,’’ he said. ‘‘The Blues were more physical than us around the collision area, and we coughed up the ball too easy which they punished us for.
‘‘But it was an opportunity for some young men to say ‘hey, this is me’, it’s another level up from Mitre 10, and a chance for these guys to be a Chief and make their progress within the squad.
‘‘We got some good learnings, and our scrum went OK. We had some young props and Atu Moli making his comeback. He came through really well.’’