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Stephen Perofeta on the key to the Blues win over the Crusaders
By Ben Smith
The Blues 26-6 win over the Crusaders was a resounding defensive effort, holding the defending champions try-less for the first time since 2015.
Winger Caleb Clarke can be thanked in part for that after a miraculous cover tackle on centre Levi Aumua in the second half, dislodging the ball as Aumua dived over to score.
First five-eighth Stephen Perofeta said the key for the Blues beating the Crusaders was "keeping it simple" as they relied on physicality to bulldoze the Crusaders anytime they reached the 22.
"In fairness it is a great outcome, but we just wanted to make it real simple this week," Perofeta told Sky Sport NZ.
"The Crusaders have dominated that physical battle, the set-piece battle, every year they have been successful.
"They are still that team, it's still early in the season, but for our boys we are proud that we put on a performance that we talked about the whole week."
The first half played out with the home side taking a 9-6 half-time lead before a 20 minute period of Blues power rugby overwhelmed the Crusaders to start the second half.
Prop Ofa Tu'ungafasi scored the first try after a relentless barrage of forward carries, which was followed up by a quick strike to centre AJ Lam to extend the lead to 23-6.
The Blues camped inside the Crusaders' 22 soon after and continued to pile on the pressure through the big men.
Perofeta said that there weren't any special half-time talks to attribute to one of their best periods of rugby this season.
"Nothing new [was said], we just talked about keeping it simple around the way we exit and the way we kicked," he said.
"And just our basics, we made a few errors in the first half around handling errors, and we still made them in the second half.
"We just tried to make it simple around trusting our defence, taking care of the pill."
On whether keeping the Crusaders try-less indicated that something different was brewing this season, Perofeta said so.
"Yes, we are fighting for every moment, Caleb's a player who will just keep doing that, right to the 80th [minute]," he said of Clarke's effort.
"It's round five, we are building nicely against a quality Crusaders time, to keep them tryless is great from our defence."
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Latest Comments
Warren, if you think you should stay on coaching Wales, you are beyond deluded. If you love Wales & Welsh rugby as much as you say you do (& I'm sure you probably do) you should resign immediately so this once proud & passionate rugby nation can rebuild without you. How many of your players will make the British & Irish Lions squad.?
It's time to walk the plank.!
Go to commentsYeah nar I pretty much agree with that sentiment, wasn't just about the lineout though.
Yeah, I think it's the future of SR, even TRC. Graham above just now posting about how good a night it was with a dbl header of ENGvSA and NZvFrance, and now I don't want to kick SA or Argentina out of TRC but it would be great if in this next of the woods 2 more top teams could come in to create more of these sort of nights (for rugby's appeal). Often Arg and SA and both travel here and you get those games but more often doesn't work out right.
Obviously a long way off but USA and Japan are the obvious two. First thing we need to do is get Eddie Jones kicked out of Japan so they can start improving again and then get a couple of US teams in SRP (even if one its just a US based and augmented Jaguares).
It will start off the whole conferences are crap debate again (which I will continue to argue vehemently against), but imagine a 6 team Pacific conference, Tokyo Sunwolves (drafted from Tokyo JRLO teams), Tokyo All Stars (made up of best remaining foreign players and overseas drafts), ALL Nihon (best of local non Tokyo based talent, inc China/Korea etc, with mainland Japan), a could of West Coast american franchises and perhaps a second self PI driven Hawai'i based team, or Jagaures. So I see a short NFL like 3 or 4 month comp as fitting best, maybe not even a full round, NZvAUSvPAC, all games taking place within a 6hr window. Model for NZ will definitely still require a competitive and funded NPC!
On the Crusaders, I liked last years ending with Grace on the bench (ovbiously form dependent but thats how it ended) and Lio-Willie at 8. I could have Blackadder trying to be a 7 but think balance will be used with him at 6 and Kellow as 7. Scott Barrett is an international 6 sized player. It is just NZ style/model that pushes him into the tight, I reckon he'd be a great loose player, and saders have Strange and Cahill as bigger players (plus that change could draw someone like Darry back). Same with Haig now, hes not grown yet but Barrett hight and been playing 6, now that the Highlanders have only chosen two locks he'll be playing lock, and that is going to change his growth trajectory massively, rather than seeing him grow like an International 6.
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