Blues go searching their soul . . . again
Super Rugby
No team drops into crisis mode with the same ease as the Blues.
It’s not like they are new to this business of soul searching after just five games. That bit they are good at. They have never had too many problems identifying their faults — not that it should have been overly challenging working out what went wrong in the 63-40 loss to the Sharks — so the Blues have at least worked out that they were an abomination on defence.
“After a performance like that it is pretty obvious what we need to be working on,” said Blues coach Tana Umaga.
“We have to get the defensive side of our game right.
“We can’t chuck everything out. We haven’t got time to start again so I have faith in what we are doing. We have reviewed it and seen the areas we need to focus on. You only have so many days to rectify things so you can’t cover everything.”
The harder part of the puzzle and the bit they have rarely if ever managed is to bounce back quickly with definitive evidence that they have fixed the problems they identified.
It has no doubt been a tough week. One where a frustrated coaching staff have put plenty of heat on the players to take a greater level of personal responsibility for their performances.
Umaga didn’t quite get round to being explicit as to what sort of tone has been adopted in regard to his dealings with the players, but he was fairly clear about how he felt in the minutes after last week’s hiding by the Sharks.
“I was pretty p***** off that we lost to be honest,” he said. “I don’t know, did you want me to smile?”
But even if things have been laid bare in the buildup and the Blues have done ample soul searching, that provides little reason to believe they will be a vastly improved side when they take on the Chiefs in Hamilton tomorrow night.
They have, of course, had many similar weeks where they promised an improvement and didn’t get close.