NSW Blues: Tahs’ Super finals hopes buried at Eden Park
Darren Walton |
With a captain’s frank confession that his side wasn’t good enough, the NSW Waratahs’ Super Rugby Pacific season of promise is officially over.
The Waratahs’ faint finals hopes ended in despair with an ugly, record-breaking and entirely expected 46-6 loss to the rampant Blues in Auckland on Saturday.
The Waratahs needed to defeat the defending champions for the first time at Eden Park in 16 years to keep their spluttering campaign alive.
Instead, Dan McKellar’s depleted troops, often their own worst enemies needlessly kicking possession away, copped a seven-tries-to-nil drubbing at New Zealand rugby’s traditional burial ground.
“The Blues were too good, too classy for us,” stand-in skipper Hugh Sinclair said.
For the opening half an hour, a famous NSW victory looked possible – until the wheels fell off in a sorry, anticlimactic conclusion to what had been the Waratahs’ best start to a Super campaign since 2009.
But a disastrous, coach-killing four-minute lapse before the interval ultimately cruelled the dreamy visitors, before the Blues ran amok with four tries in a second-half clinic to book their own spot in the finals.
Despite being without injured stars Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, Max Jorgensen, skipper Jake Gordon and flankers Rob Leota and Charlie Gamble, the Waratahs were right in the must-win game for both sides after rookie flyhalf Jack Bowen slotted a 34th-minute penalty goal to reduce the deficit to four points.
Playing with spirit, as they should with their season on the line, the Tahs had winger Andrew Kellaway and rookie scrumhalf Teddy Wilson to thank for desperate try-saving tackles to stay in the contest.
But a Bowen blunder, when he slipped and failed to find touch for a clearing kick, and a touch of magic from two-time world player of the player Beauden Barrett blew the game wide open for the Blues in a twinkling.
Two tries in three minutes to brilliant centre Rieko Ioane, the second after the halftime siren when Waratahs opposite Henry O’Donnell couldn’t handle a probing kick from Barrett near halfway, suddenly extended the Blues’ tenuous lead from 10-6 to 24-6.
There was no coming back for the Waratahs when fullback Corey Evans strolled over untouched shortly after the break to extend the Blues’ lead to 31-6.
The Blues’ sixth try, to hooker Ricky Riccitelli, was more than academic.
It virtually secured a precious bonus point to pile the pressure on Moana Pasifika to produce a similar victory later on Saturday against the Hurricanes in Wellington to deny Vern Cotter’s side a place in the finals.
The hosts’ seventh five-pointer was more significant to Ioane, who equalled All Blacks great Doug Howlett’s Blues try-scoring record with 55 after beating three Waratahs defenders to another menacing Barrett kick.
The Blues’ biggest-ever victory margin over the Waratahs did not look likely when Bowen’s two first-half penalties almost wiped out Mark Tele’a’s 11th-minute try, then Ioane’s first strike off a deft AJ Lam grubber.
But an hour later and the clinical Blues were anxiously awaiting their finals fate.
“They had a couple of opportunities in that first half, a couple of those kicks just went to hand and they’re good enough to finish them and they’re ruthless enough to put us away in that second half, and we just couldn’t get a sniff,” Sinclair said.
“Their defence was great and, yeah, back to the drawing board for us.”
The Blues were left sweating on the fourth-placed Hurricanes denying Moana an unlikely bonus-point triumph away in the NZ capital, and their prayers were answered later on Saturday night.
A comprehensive 64-12 victory for the Hurricanes confirmed the Blues will face the table-topping Chiefs in Hamilton for a place in the semi-finals.
AAP
