Super Rugby Pacific: Blues take extra lessons from opening-round win over Fijian Drua

The Blues scored five tries in the first half of their win over the Fijian Drua. Photo / Photosport

The Blues’ 34-10 win over the Fijian Drua in their Super Rugby Pacific season opener in Whangārei on Saturday afternoon taught coach Vern Cotter more about his side than he might have expected.

A five-try first half all but wrapped up the win for the Blues as they led 29-3 at the break, but a yellow card to Finlay Christie soon after the restart left the side without a halfback.

It was a situation Cotter admitted after the game that the Blues hadn’t drilled much of in the pre-season, but Stephen Perofeta moved in from first five-eighths to cover the gap and did a solid job - even having to feed a scrum.

It was an unexpected shift in what had already been a strong start to the season for the Blues’ new first-choice No 10, with fullback Zarn Sullivan also putting a big stamp on the game as a secondary option and attacking threat.

“We had to get through one of those situations we hadn’t planned for when got a yellow card for the nine. We hadn’t done a lot of work around that, but Stevie went into halfback and finished the game as captain as well,” Cotter said.

“Those guys are growing around how they manage games and adapting to situations that are a little difficult.”

The Blues scored five tries in the first half of their win over the Fijian Drua. Photo / Photosport

Sullivan had arguably the most impressive play of the game when he perfectly hit a 50/22 kick early in the first half, working with a tight target given the cover defence of the Fijian Drua, and was on the spot to finish off a couple of tries out wide.

Cotter noted the performance of the Blues’ scrum, too, which was an area where they won a number of penalties.

It was a solid platform to launch the rest of their campaign from, but Cotter noted it was simply a starting point.

“There will be detail within the game - carry-cleans, support play, launch strikes, ball in air and kicking - we’ll have to look at, but overall I would say the stress of going from friendly games to competition games at home against a team that’s very powerful and fast, I thought we were okay and remained reasonably composed,” the new coach said.

“If you’re looking at where we can improve, it’s putting points on, having a talk at halftime, and not going to sleep going back into the second half. I thought we lacked that discipline and made it difficult. We need to keep piling on good moments and we didn’t. If we’re talking about our famous momentum, it went against us and that’s dangerous.

“We pulled ourselves back into the game through good set piece. The scrum was good... bar a couple where we thought it was going to happen for us. The first 20 minutes we were sluggish and didn’t have a lot of line speed and we were letting the ball work for us a fair bit by kicking long, but we need to have a bit more energy at the start of games and a little bit more aggression around that.”

Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.