Super Rugby Pacific: Why Leon MacDonald thinks the Blues still have more to find

The Blues are close to establishing themselves as the top seed in the Super Rugby Pacific playoffs, but they are far from done improving their performance.

With their 53-26 win over the Reds in Auckland,
the Blues hold a seven-point buffer atop the ladder, and a victory over the Brumbies in Canberra on Saturday would see them end the regular season there.

With two rounds remaining, it’s a target Blues coach Leon MacDonald wants his team to hit – whether it’s against the Brumbies or next week against the Waratahs, and he believes continued construction will make that happen. .

“We don’t want to lose momentum. It’s important that we keep building,” MacDonald said.

“We don’t want to go back and it’s easy for us to pick ourselves up for such an important game against the other top team. What we want to take away from next week is a better performance than this week. We just want to keep improving every week.”

Part of that will depend on the health of the team. At the end of the season, it is often the case that the depth of the team can play a role, and how a team uses their bench can also be a factor.

“We’re starting to see now throughout the competition that some teams are really starting to struggle with some injuries, so it’s important that we have good depth across the squad.”

The Blues could struggle to improve their attack. Against the Reds at Eden Park, their forwards carried hard and quickly broke down, allowing space in the back line to move, which was well used. Beauden Barrett and Stephen Perofeta worked well as double play threats, with each backline player having impressive moments.

In their last two matches, the Blues have run from 19 tries and scored 124 points, and their plus-183 differential is a Super Rugby best of 52 points.

However, MacDonald acknowledged some defensive concerns. Although mostly defensively solid, the four tries scored by the Reds all came a bit easily – with two of the pick-and-go game close to the line, before Reds full-back Jock Campbell was successful a double at the end of the counterattack.

“There are always things we want to improve. We won’t be happy with some of the defensive work on our try line, and some of our discipline and decision-making on the breakdown.

“Most of the time we give penalties out of concern and eagerness to do well for the team, but sometimes [it helps] be a bit smarter and don’t give the ref pictures to ping us. We trust our D, our D looks really good in the phases, so we probably just need to be a bit smarter there.”