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'It was't all doom and gloom for us': Blues happy with result after Drua surprise

(Photo by Kelly Defina/Getty Images)

Blues first five Beauden Barrett likened the Fijian Drua to the Fijian national side after his side’s 35-18 win in Melbourne.

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Barrett copped a visible black eye when the All Blacks played Fiji in Dunedin last year and expected his side to come under heat as the Drua brought a new level of physicality.

The 30-year-old said that the Blues almost underestimated how much the Drua would be able to disrupt their flow.

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Abbie Ward on beating the Black Ferns

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Abbie Ward on beating the Black Ferns

“It reminded me of the international games against Fiji last year. They’re typically a tough side to play, a Fijian side,” Barrett said.

“They’re physical, and we expected that. Perhaps we underestimated how much they can fluster you because of the lack of momentum that we got and we weren’t allowed to play our game at times.

“So that’s where we probably saw the frustration shown and ill-discipline, allowing them to get free rides.”

The Fijian Drua found success early by using the grubber kicks from anywhere on the field to get in behind the Blues defence. The strategy paid off when hooker Mesulame Dolokoto scored their first try backing up on the inside after a recovery of one of those kicks.

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Barrett described them as ‘freakish’ as the Drua showed a continued ability to recover many of their well placed grubbers.

“We certainly expected that part of it, as well as those little freakish grubber kicks in behind the defensive line from loose forwards,” he said.

“We just had to be ‘on’ all the time and at times they caught us out but that’s just how they play. It was always going to be a test for us mentally and as a system collectively.”

The Blues found it hard to crack the Drua defence relying on two intercept tries to AJ Lam and Rieko Ioane to keep a large buffer between the two sides. Lam scored his second try from a set piece play close to the line to effectively seal the result in the 64th minute.

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Blues head coach Leon MacDonald didn’t want to make excuses for their inability to put the game away comprehensively, as penalties gave the Drua plenty of attacking opportunities.

“I don’t want to make excuses for the inaccuracies. Especially our discipline, it’s something we try to be very disciplined but we gave away too many soft penalties. We
talked all week around what they want – they want to have penalties, they want to be able to play,” he said.

“If we fall asleep on defence, they’re gonna take quick taps et cetera and we really wanted to deliver there and I think by and large we did. I thought were created a
lot of pressure with our defence and we looked good but then we’d give a penalty away.

“That was probably the most frustrating thing. I thought our intensity on defence got better as the game went on in terms of coming off the line and I thought in the first half
we had some good line speed and created some pressure there and we were able to finish off some good tries.

“It was’t all doom and gloom for us – five points in this competition are like gold and we’ll regroup again. We’re playing in Perth and another tough battle.”

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J
JW 3 hours ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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