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The Chiefs on what went wrong in scoreless loss to the Blues
By Ben Smith
The Chiefs slumped to a 25-0 loss at the hands of the visiting Blues in what was their second consecutive home defeat after losing to the Crusaders two weeks ago.
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The home side started with next to no possession in the first 20 minutes which saw the Blues race out to a 13-0 lead, while the Chiefs were unable to execute inside the Blues’ 22 squandering multiple chances to score.
Blues prop Ofa Tu’ungafasi made a critical try saving tackle on Samisoni Taukei’aho right on halftime, dislodging the ball as the Chiefs hooker dived over the line in the corner. The Blues were down to 13-men at the time which the Chiefs were not able to capitalise on.
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Chiefs head coach Clayton McMillan pointed to the end of the first half as a pivotal turning point.
“I reckon we probably didn’t paint a whole lot of positive pictures early, gave some penalties away. They got all the possession, all the territory early so [we were] having to
defend for long periods of time,” head coach Clayton McMillan explained.
“But when we did get our opportunities down in their half, particularly late in the game, we just weren’t clinical enough to nail them. I think we’ll reflect on, in particular, the 10 minutes just before halftime and the 10 minutes just after halftime where they were down to 14, 13 men.
“A couple of scrums there where ball splits out the back, we’re going forward. A lineout try that Soni should score. All of a sudden, you go into halftime with maybe a 13-7 deficit. You come out halftime and again, a couple of opportunities there that we could have nailed, all of a sudden the game looks a lot different and maybe some of our decisions…
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“You get plenty of penalties, you start taking points because it’s about scoreboard pressure then. But we missed all of those opportunities and we were just chasing the game and they were too good and just shut us out.”
Captain Sam Cane said the performance was ‘not good enough’ and also pointed to the slow start that left them behind on the scoreboard but credited the Blues’ defence for shutting them out.
“We didn’t start overly well. We stayed in the fight and gave ourselves an opportunity in the last 10 minutes of that first half and looked to have so many opportunities and things that are there or thereabouts but not get them,” he said.
“Not for one minute I didn’t think that we didn’t have the belief, probably up until the last 5 minutes where realistically the game was out of reach.
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“But it was about making sure we didn’t get frustrated at those opportunities because it felt like we’d grind our way back into the game [and say] ‘Yep we’e got a try, right we’re working our way back in’; only for it to have gone back and disallowed or not nailing opportunities so [it would be] ‘Right, we’ll go again, we’ll grind our way back in’ but their defence was too good.”
“They scrambled well, they took pretty much every opportunity, didn’t they? If you look at it, and we didn’t take a single one at the end. That hurts, it sucks and it’s not good enough from us.
“We’ve made it a bit hard on ourselves now.”
