Eden Park has long been a happy hunting ground for the Blues in Super Rugby Pacific, but in 2025, the reigning champions have lost three out of three at home, falling to tenth place on the table after six rounds.
Although this week’s bye for the Blues comes at a good time for Vern Cotter and his side, Saturday evening against the Crusaders was a poor showing by their standards. They struggled to string together any momentum with ball in hand and conceded a mammoth 42 points on the defensive side of the ball.
Cotter admits the result is disappointing, but the Blues head coach is more worried about the performances going forward.
“If you look at the emotion, it’s disappointing, it’s another game at home that we haven’t put in a performance,” Cotter told media post-match.
“We needed to get the win, so if you’re looking at the performance, I think the game gets constructed and gets built, and I don’t think we were able to build it through set piece and just simple things like catching high balls.
“I thought we seemed a little lethargic in and around our reactions. We weren’t reacting as quickly as we could have been.”
Cotter was forced in making some changes to his matchday 23, due to midweek injuries to captain Patrick Tuipulotu and experienced hooker Kurt Eklund.
Cotter confirmed Eklund had a groin injury, and Tuipulotu rolled his ankle at training but said that they will have to wait for more information during the week.
Despite missing some of his key players, the Blues head coach was happy some players got some game time.
“I think long term it’s good for some of these young guys to get game time now, if you’re building for the future. But we probably missed a little bit of experience today in and around the team.”
When asked whether Cotter feels like there was a mindset issue from his players in Saturday evening’s contest, he believed they weren’t connected enough.
“We seem to use the word unravel, because I mean the players are threaded together. They are threaded together through the jersey and the culture, and I just felt that we just didn’t have that tonight.
“Perhaps that thread tightened at key moments. I mean, our first lineout was missed, did we have the right calm and in-control mindset, did we have experience? That doesn’t matter, next job.
“These are things that are learned the whole way through the season, so it’s a learning process for some of these players. I think if I’m being objective about it, we’re hating it, losing at home and losing by that amount of points, but we’ll use it as a vehicle to become better.”
Cotter isn’t looking too far forward though, and he explains that the table isn’t going to move unless his side’s performances improve.
“I’m not really looking at that, but we’re conscious of it. I really need to improve our performance, and that’ll be what we’re focusing on, how we can become better as a team.
“It’s not all bad, but today was, today’s a rough day, and there’s time to bounce back from it.”
