Blues keen to build on mini revival

After securing back-to-back wins in Australia against the Brumbies and Waratahs, the Blues are aiming to continue with their mid-season revival when they host the Cheetahs in Auckland on Friday.

The Blues raced into a 26-0 lead at half-time against the Waratahs in Sydney on Saturday and held off a second half comeback from their hosts before claiming a 40-33 victory.

“It would have been good if we had carried it on to the second half and we’re obviously very happy with the result,” said Blues head coach Tana Umaga.

“We haven’t won here for a long time so it was something we’re pretty proud of.

“We lost a bit of our structure and they came out and were determined to right some wrongs from the first half and we weren’t able to slow their ball down or get the ball back – I don’t think we had much ball in that second half.

“When we did we were fortunate to have a couple of pretty exciting kids [the Ioane brothers, Rieko and Akira] score some good tries and keep us that little bit ahead.”

Umaga said the first half effort had been everything they trained in the lead-up to the game and it had started raining just as they got to the ground so that needed them to change things up a little at that stage to play more down in the Waratahs territory and squeeze them in there.

That was something they had achieved to get to a 26-0 lead at the break.

“Our ability to adapt to the conditions was really good,” he added. [While the first] Forty minutes was good, we knew they were going to come back. We talked about it but we just went off the boil there.”

“We’re still involved in this season so we want to keep improving and keep working hard. We just want to make sure we keep getting the results we work for and I thought we did work hard for that result but there are some things we can make teams pay.

“We want to be ruthless in that because there are successful sides that can do that. It’s just a work in progress.”

Umaga was always confident the side had done enough to hold on to win because they had developed the necessary resilience and the desire to finish well.

“They were coming thick and fast but I don’t think I got to the stage where we were going to lose,” he explained.

They had been looking to score a bonus point but as the Waratahs came back it was a case of shutting up shop and deciding to get four points rather than none.

“We defended well for long periods of time and we made them work hard for their tries but again there was probably a little lack of discipline in that second half,” he said.