Blues showed some fight but their season is over
The record book does not lie and it looks ugly for Umaga’s side.
The Blues’ season is over. But their walls are not tumbling down after what might have been their gutsiest performance of this illfated Super Rugby season.
You take your wins where you can find them when you are the doormats of New Zealand franchise rugby. And seven days on from a shameful performance on their home track against the Sharks, this was a moral victory of a kind for an outfit that just can’t take a trick at the moment.
Yes, it was another defeat, their fifth in six matches, in Hamilton last night as Tana Umaga’s men went down 21-19 to the Chiefs in a good old-fashioned arm-wrestle. It wasn’t pretty, no matter whose scarf you had draped round your neck, but it was deeply enthralling.
The Blues made it that way by digging in and fighting to the very end. They hardly had any ball the entire second 40 but they led deep into the contest and probably only saw the match slip from their grasp when they infringed just once too often under pressure and saw Josh Goodhue sent to the sinbin with a dozen minutes remaining.
From there the Chiefs got to the right end of the field, went to the scrum and simply pounded and pounded until the inevitable penalty try came their way. Game over. It was a cruel way for the Blues to go down. But an inevitable one. The Chiefs were good enough to extend their remarkable unbeaten record against their northern neighbours to 14 matches, and were able to execute when it mattered.
It is not the end of days for the Blues. They showed so, so much more character than last week’s turnstile defensive effort. But you cannot win rugby matches at this level on guts alone.
You have to have some skill. Unfortunately for a club that is mired in a spiral of underachievement, they just lack that at the moment.
It was a much, much better first 40 from the Blues. Maybe, finally, those players have started listening to their coaches. Maybe they’ve finally grasped the urgency of their situation.
They still fell off the odd tackle – 10 for a half in which they made 68 – but they were on the right side of that ledger by the end of the first 40 with the Chefs missing 11 of their 59 attempted. And the Blues scrambled well when they were put under pressure. Conceding just the single try for the spell was a heck of a step forward.
There was still the odd ragged moment. Stephen Perofeta, who is some talent with ball in hand and space in front, blew back-to-back restarts. The razzle-dazzle is great, but you have to take care of the basics as well.
More importantly there was a clinical aspect to the Blues’ approach through the first half. They collected their points. They played the percentages. They stayed in the contest, and when one or two things went their way late in the piece, they snatched an unlikely halftime lead (19-14).
They did at all under a major reshuffle too after losing senior figures George Moiala and Jerome Kaino a half-hour into the contest. It was not the sort of setback a team under the gun like the Blues needed.
Somehow, though, they hung in there and finished the half with a wet sail, James Parsons’ power try four minutes from time was a major confidence-booster. Then they made their way back down, and added another three points.
But the test was going to be how they backed it up in the second 40. Winning time. Not an area they’ve exactly owned in the last, er, decade.
There was plenty to admire about the Blues’ second half. They hung in there brilliantly. They scrambled very, very well on defence as the Chiefs put them under the blowtorch. But they simply are not good enough to win these big-time contests. The record book tells us that. They can’t take a trick against their Kiwi rivals, and something has to change at Alexandra Park.