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Australia's Super Rugby Trans-Tasman misery continues as Blues thump Brumbies in Auckland
By AAP
The Brumbies have unravelled after building a promising lead to fall to the Blues 38-10 in Auckland on Saturday.
Hooker Connal McInerney scored from a Brumbies maul to turn a period of dominance into a 10-7 lead with five minutes to play in the first half at Eden Park.
But they went to the break down 17-10, a penalty after a sloppy restart followed by a weaving try to Finlay Christie that exposed some flaky defence close to the line.
The Blues didn't give Dan McKellar's men a sniff in the second half, AJ Lam's try with 20 minutes to play creating a 31-10 lead before Folau Fainga'a was yellow-carded after continuous Brumbies infringements.
Halfback Nic White completed a successful return from injury, engineering a crafty assault of the short-priced favourites in the first half.
They played close to the lines to expose the Blues' line-out and build momentum from their scrum.
That helped the Brumbies overcome an opening try to the Blues that came a fter a head-scratching line-out penalty that had everyone confused.
But the Brumbies then allowed the red-headed Christie to duck and dive between five Brumbies close to the line, the visitors finished with 31 missed tackles as the Blues also dominated the breakdown.
"He looked like a ginger running from the sun looking for shade," Blues captain Tom Robinson told the broadcast post-game.
"He's such an awesome dude and it was a huge moment; that little win there got us that momentum.
"In the first half we let them in through what we call dumb-arse penalties ... and we sorted them out in the second half."
It completed a tough slog of three games across the Tasman since their gutting loss to the Queensland Reds in the Super Rugby AU final.
Blues 38 (Tries to Kurt Eklund, Finlay Christie, Bryce Heem, AJ Lamand TJ Faiane; 4 conversions and penalty to Otere Black, penalty to Harry Plummer)
Brumbies 10 (Try to Connal McInerney; conversion and penalty to Noah Lolesio; yellow card to Folau Fainga'a)
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It is so good that we now all get excited and debate who is best and emotionally get involved. We all back our teams which is great. Up until about 15-20 years ago, NZ was basically on its own, and then Saffa, Aussie and sometimes French and English were there. We now have at least 5-6 really top sides and another 4 who keep improving. This is so healthy. So we should not resort to rubbish comments and unhealthy debate, but rather all be chuffed that the product we watch is not competitive, exciting and often uncertain. It would be so good if World Rugger could find a way to align the rules to professional players as well as spectators. Live rugby games are SO boring as there is SO much down time as we wait for refs and TMOs and whoever else to look at every small event going back endless phases with the hope of eventually find a minute infringement to then decide cancel what was a wonderful try. This is the ultimate cork back in the bottle moment and feels like every balloon is always being popped. Come on- we must be better with the rules.
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