Hurricanes sweat on Blackwell
Hurricanes coach Jason Holland says they will need to make a quick assessment of James Blackwell to see if he can fly out with the team today to South Africa.
The lock was walking around in a moon boot after the Hurricanes’ 29-28 Super Rugby pre-season loss to the Blues at Onewa Domain on the North Shore yesterday.
Holland said they didn’t think his problem was serious, but as the team flies out to South Africa early this morning for its season opener against the Stormers, they’ll have to make an urgent call on whether he’ll be able to join them.
‘‘He’s got a horrible big toe, which flares up a bit,’’ Holland said
‘‘I wouldn’t think it’s too serious, but it’s niggly enough to get him off before we wanted to.
‘‘We’ll have to assess him pretty quickly, before we go to Africa in the morning.’’
Played in sweltering conditions and in front of around 1000 spectators, Hurricanes winger Ben Lam picked up the opening try in the seventh minute after his team had applied all of the early pressure.
But the Blues then got themselves into the game, with their first try going to Tony Lamborn, capitalising on a break down the left and there were follow up tries to Jordan Hyland and Dalton Papalii.
Lamborn suffered a gash to the head later in the game, but was still able to return.
Six minutes before the break the Hurricanes’ Ngani Laumape made a big charge up the middle to stretch the Blues defence and the attack was finished off by Ricky Riccitelli, who went in from close range.
Fletcher Smith’s conversion made the score 17-14 at halftime.
The Blues scored the first two tries of the second half, coming from Akira Ioane and Sam Nock, who made a 40m run to score.
By then, both teams had emptied their huge benches and while the game then became more open, there were also more mistakes.
But the Hurricanes were able to score the last two tries of the game, coming from Jamie Booth and then Asafo Aumua three minutes from time.
Holland said he was pleased with how his team played and felt there had been progression from the 40-19 defeat to the Crusaders the previous weekend.
‘‘There are parts of the game we’ll be disappointed in when we look at the tape, but there was some real improvements to our physicality, our carry, things like that in this game that we can take forward,’’ he said.
‘‘It was definitely a step up. We’re still making too many errors, the Blues scored from two or three of our errors of being high in contact and being stripped, but they should be easy fixes once we get to Africa.’’
For the Blues, they’ve now gone two from two over the pre-season, this this victory backing up the 26-19 win over the Chiefs last weekend.
‘‘There were some parts of the stuff we were working on that was really good to see,’’ a satisfied Blues coach Leon MacDonald said.
‘‘We struggled in the second half, we obviously had a few changes.
‘‘We lost our cohesion and I thought they played pretty well to catch up.
‘‘But there were periods in that first half where there was some good play and we created some good tries.’’
It’s a mouth-watering opening game of the 2020 Super Rugby season at Eden Park next Friday night when the Blues go up against Warren Gatland’s Chiefs and MacDonald said he was confident his team would be ready.
‘‘We’ll be in good stead, we made progress,’’ he said.
‘‘You’re trying to cover a lot in the short pre-season and that was a great hitout for us, because there were a lot of things there that we didn’t get quite right and we can address this week.
‘‘But it was physical and we need to be physical next week, so that will be good for us as well.’’