Closed off but certainly not cocooned from the chaos on the Eden Park pitch as the Brumbies launched their final, desperate attempt to win the semifinal on Saturday night, Blues head coach Leon MacDonald watched helpless in the coaches’ box.
He had seen his side roar out to a 20-7 lead and his stand-in skipper Beauden Barrett hit the crossbar with a 45m dropped goal attempt which just highlighted his team’s first-half dominance in the atrocious weather conditions when here was Brumbies No.10 Noah Lolosio attempting one from closer range to win the match with less than two minutes remaining.
“It was nearly like theatre with them lining up a droppie on fulltime,” MacDonald said afterwards. “I was thinking, ‘surely not?’. And your tighthead prop gets up off the line and charges it down. I think he made the tackle as well. They’re just huge, those little moments you’re hoping to grab in the big games.”
That was Ofa Tuungafasi, one of the heaviest men on the pitch, who was keenly aware of the situation and sprinted to get a hand on the ball and defuse the danger.
Tuungafasi’s intervention seemed to sum up a topsy turvy match high on drama and which sent the Blues into the final on the same piece of grass against the near perennial champion Crusaders next Saturday night.
That the pair will meet in the competition showpiece isn’t a huge surprise – they are clearly the best two teams in it – but the manner of the Blues’ victory was.
It was their 15th on the trot and it came after two second-half yellow cards for Kurt Eklund and Adrian Choat. The Blues enjoyed narrow wins over the Brumbies and Waratahs in the regular season but they paled into comparison to this in terms of nerve-shredding importance.
The Blues held it together, just, but the cracks were appearing in terms of their discipline and failure to handle the danger posed by the Brumbies’ lineout drive. In the end the Brumbies also had excellent claims for a penalty declined by referee Ben O’Keeffe after Luke Reimer contested possession once Luke Romano was tackled in front of the posts.
“It’s really exciting – a great week,” said MacDonald of the prospect of playing against the Crusaders, a team he coached and played for. “The last game [won 27-23 by the Blues in Christchurch] was a cracker. Hopefully the weather plays its part because it's two teams who like to use the ball, and use it well. If we can fill the stadium up and if it's anything like last game, it’s going be one hell of an event.”
The weather will play its part of course and if Saturday night was anything to go by, it probably won’t be conducive to running rugby. There will be a lot of kicking from both teams, with the Crusaders in particular keen to disrupt a Barrett, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck and Rieko Ioane axis which is improving by the week.
MacDonald watched the Crusaders’ 20-7 semifinal victory over the Chiefs a couple of times and not surprisingly paid credit to the red and black defence.
“Yeah, 222 [tackles] ...This is their bread and butter, finals rugby. They love it. This is our second final in two years and we’re at home again and excited too. There’s everything to play for. You couldn’t script it any better.
“I thought we played really well in the first half … it rained a lot at halftime, and a couple of little moments went their way. They went to the air and got a little bit of reward there, and got a little bit of reward at the maul, and all of a sudden we were defending our line,” said MacDonald.
“We spoke all week about not giving them penalties and defending their maul. We did that well in the first half but unfortunately it started to eventuate in the second half.
“There were a lot of big tackles and desperation plays. I thought we had good control of the game, but we just weren’t able to continue in the second half which is frustrating, but it’s also finals footy against a very good rugby team who chucked everything at us. In finals rugby one point is enough, that’s what we needed to get through to the final, and we took one point.”
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