All the action and reaction from Wellington
The Canes pain is over for the Blues who punished their ill-disciplined hosts to win 24-15 on a horror night for the team in yellow in Wellington last night.
Chasing a 10th straight Super Rugby win over the Blues, the Hurricanes all but handed victory to their grateful guests as they were reduced to 12 men in the dying minutes thanks to some untimely blunders.
Prop Tyrel Lomax was red carded by referee Mike Fraser for a 47th-minute high shoulder charge on Stephen Perofeta while Vaea Fifita was sin binned in the 68th for a no-arms tackle.
It became near farcical when Jordie Barrett joined them on the sidelines for what Fraser ruled an intentional knock-on in the 74th minute, the penalty try kicking the Blues out to a healthy ninepoint buffer.
The Hurricanes defied their one-man deficit to hit the front with 17 minutes left before Fifita was marched and Otere Black’s penalty put them back in the lead against his old team.
There was no way back for the Hurricanes whose three-match winning streak ended, while the Blues racked up three successive victories of their own to continue their resurgence.
The Hurricanes couldn’t quibble too much with Fraser’s rulings and were left lamenting their poor judgment as they eye the Chiefs and Crusaders on successive Fridays.
The Blues arrived in Wellington carrying the extra baggage of a horror record in New Zealand derbies: 26 losses from their last 29, including the Chiefs and Crusaders already this year.
Their previous win over the Hurricanes was in 2014, with their hosts winning the last nine in a row.
After the opening stanza it looked one-way traffic again, and the Hurricanes could barely have hoped for a better start against a team making the long trek from South Africa where they won twice for the first time since 2004.
The yellow scrum shunted the Blues pack, Ngani Laumape skipped past a wrong-footed Black, Fifita roamed menacingly out wide and flipped a wonderful one-handed offload to Ben Lam who strolled over inside two minutes.
The floodgates creaked but didn’t open as the Canes’ big men hammered away for the first quarter. Led by captain Patrick Tuipulotu the Blues’ defensive line held firm, but there were some wild passes and poor attacking kicks from both Fletcher
Smith and Jordie Barrett nothing really clicked.
On a perfect night for rugby it as was average fare in the first 40, and the Blues somehow hit the front just before halftime.
Laumape rushed up and collided with dummy runner Tom Robinson but it was waved play on, and the returning Akira Ioane ended up plunging over.
Barrett’s late penalty after the ever-impressive Du’Plessis Kirifi turned one over saw the hosts pinch a one-point halftime lead.
Then came the big turning point in an even-poised match when Lomax, a colossus for the Hurricanes this year, was marched after several looks at his high shot. There was clear shoulder-to-head contact and despite captain TJ Perenara’s protests there was no turning back.
With Lam required in a depleted scrum the Blues enjoyed more space and gave it some air as Rieko Ioane became more of a handful. They stretched the defence until wing Mark Telea skidded over out wide, just inside the chalk despite replacement Wes Goosen’s desperate tackle attempt.
It gave the Blues a six-point buffer entering the final quarter, but the Hurricanes weren’t going away.
They looked to have botched an attacking scrum as the Blues shoved hard, but a backpedalling Gareth Evans darted blind with just one to beat, setting up tryscoring machine Kobus van Wyk to stroll over.
A superb sideline conversion from Barrett got the Cake Tin crowd roaring and the hosts were up by one entering a tense final 15 minutes.