In what is probably a fair reflection of their stop-start Covid-affected Super Rugby Pacific season still only three games old, the Blues believe they lost the match in which they performed best while winning the two they struggled most in.

That defeat to the Hurricanes in Dunedin last month, a bizarre 33-32 reversal after they conceded three tries in the final nine minutes, including Ardie Savea’s converted score with seconds remaining, forced the Blues into some early-season soul searching regarding how they could play so well and then so poorly within the space of a game.

“We produced some of the best footy I’ve seen the Blues play for 75 minutes,” skipper Dalton Papalii told 1News this week. “It was a massive learning curve. I think we have a perception on us that we’re not a full 80-minute team so we’re really working on changing that.”

And while the lessons may not have fully sunk in yet – they sneaked past the Chiefs at Eden Park after nearly gifting a late win to the visitors and took a full 40 minutes to kick into gear for a more convincing victory over the Highlanders in Albany – the Blues hope to display a new-found maturity in their return encounter against the southerners in Dunedin on Saturday afternoon.

The Blues came into the new competition with title-winning pedigree after their triumph in last year’s Super Rugby Trans-Tasman competition but like the other New Zealand-based teams have been badly affected by Covid.

Their first-round match against Moana Pasifika was postponed, as was last week’s against the Crusaders, with All Blacks first-five Beauden Barrett still feeling the effects of the virus.

Papalii, however, confirmed the Blues had trained well together this week.

“We’ve trusted the boys to do the work behind the scenes and it has showed,” Papalii said. “We had an outstanding training today.

“The Canes game was probably the best game we’ve played but we lost it. The next two I think we played some pretty average footy but we still won. We’re still growing.

“Penalties and a lack of discipline is our biggest thing. But the Canes game, yeah, that really made us look at ourselves and make some adjustments.”

The return to the fold of Barrett for this season after his Japan sabbatical, plus Roger Tuivasa-Sheck’s signing and the breaking of a trophy drought have ramped up expectations on the Blues but loose forward Papalii, who has shown impressive form, insisted that was nothing to shy away from.

“I think we’ve always had expectation on us,” he said. “We’re the city slickers up here so we’ve always got a target on our back. Everyone wants to beat us. We’ve got a lot of talent, we just need to learn how to use it.

“Winning last year was massive for us. It was always a little burden on us that we hadn’t won a trophy in a while but last year the boys stepped up and some of them played the best footy of their careers. The culture off field was fantastic too. But to be honest that was last year. We’ll take the momentum but this is a new year with new things to work on.”