MacDonald offers hand to mate Mauger
Covid denies Super Rugby debutants chance to run out in front of a big crowd at Mt Smart Stadium.
Blues coach Leon MacDonald says he reached out to his former teammate Aaron Mauger to reassure him the beleaguered Moana Pasifika team had their full support in the wake of their horror start to life in Super Rugby.
MacDonald’s Blues were due to play Mauger’s Moana Pasifika in the opening game of Super Rugby Pacific, first scheduled for the expansion club’s Mt Smart Stadium in Auckland on Friday, and then for Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium under the Queenstown bubble setup.
But that match has now been postponed after it was confirmed on Friday that Moana had seven players who had tested positive for Covid-19, with the entire squad to remain in isolation at their Queenstown hotel.
MacDonald confirmed the Blues had no idea at this stage when the postponed fixture would be played, and even had to be prepared for it to pop up at short notice, but said their sympathies went out to Moana Pasifika who continue to face major challenges around their debut season as an entity.
Already they have been severely compromised in putting their inaugural squad together by the pandemic, and now they have become the first to go down with a Covid-19 outbreak.
‘‘It’s a real shame,’’ MacDonald told a Zoom call of New Zealand media yesterday from Queenstown after his team lost both of its 40-minute stints in the ‘‘game of three halves’’ with the Chiefs and Highlanders to wrap up the short pre-season.
‘‘Opening night at Mt Smart in front of a big crowd would have been an amazing way to start their tenure in Super Rugby. Now we’re hidden away down here. I feel sorry for them. I rang up Aaron Mauger last night to say we’re thinking of them and ask if we can support in any way.
‘‘They’re doing it tough. A lot of the Moana boys are friends of our guys, and they’re keeping in touch as well. It’s a tough time for them, and we’re very aware it could be our team doing the same at any point soon – it’s just the environment we live in.’’
Asked about Mauger’s mood given his predicament, MacDonald said: ‘‘He seems as well as you can imagine. He’s pretty pragmatic and calm. They can only do what they can do, and that’s about comforting the players, and making sure families back home are feeling their men here are well looked after and safe.’’
In terms of yesterday’s rugby, MacDonald was happy enough with his team’s dual hitouts
(they lost 17-7 to the Chiefs and 21-19 to the Highlanders) and felt high-profile league recruit Roger Tuivasa-Sheck had taken another positive step in his transition to his new code.
‘‘We got lot more out of it than last week in the rain and wind (against the Hurricanes in Wellington). To get ball in hand and play some rugby was good. We tried some things and changed some things. Last week we didn’t get the opportunity to see whether they were working and this week there are going to be a lot of good pictures for us to see.’’
Tuivasa-Sheck played a half and a-bit, and
ticked some key boxes for MacDonald, even if his contributions were less visible than many.
‘‘He was better again,’’ added the Blues coach. ‘‘This was probably more like what we expect Super Rugby to be like. It was faster, the breakdown was happening pretty quick, and I thought his adjustments around the breakdown in particular, with things like ball placement and his arrival, was far better.
‘‘So another step forward for him. He got his hands on the ball a few times, but never really with any space. Generally he was in good positions and communicating well, so he’ll feel a lot better after this week’s hitout.’’
MacDonald said it was doubtful the Blues would be able to arrange a game of any sort next weekend as they awaited word on when their match against Moana would take place.
The coach conceded there was one positive aspect to a delayed start to the season.
The Blues had lost a handful of players to injury in the Hurricane hitout, though escaped unscathed yesterday. They also have Beauden Barrett making a delayed start off concussion issues, prop Karl Tu’inukuafe out until April and a number of top All Blacks (including the Ioanes, new skipper Dalton Papalii, halfback Fin Christie and props Ofa Tuungafasi and Nepo Laulala) yet to hit the field.
He’s hopeful of getting a swag of them back in the fold for the Canes match on February 27.
‘‘We haven’t got many backups left, and we’re on a knife-edge a little bit around injuries,’’ he said after having to get through yesterday’s 80 minutes without a specialist openside, and with a number of fledgling wider squad types.