Blues 'cop it on the chin'

Blues coach John Kirwan admitted that his biggest concern is his team's discipline, which cost them dearly against the Stormers.

The Auckland side were reduced to 14 men for much of the contest at Newlands, with lock Hayden Triggs shown a red card for punching Stormers captain Duane Vermeulen, and consequently found themselves on the wrong side of the penalty count in their desperate attempts to stay in the game.

Although he had still not seen the incident when he arrived for the post-match press conference, Kirwan said that there can be no excuses or complaints if Triggs had indeed thrown a punch.

"If there has been a punch thrown, then you deserve what you get and we have got to take that out of our game.

"If it was retaliation then I will leave it up to the officials to see what happened, but on both sides there is no room for that in our game so if he has thrown a punch then he deserved everything he got and we will cop it on the chin," he said.

After the red card the Blues were always going to struggle to stay in the game, and despite the obvious issue with their discipline Kirwan was encouraged by the fight they showed under pressure.

"For us it was about discipline, I thought the courage and commitment in the team made me very proud, but the discipline let us down - I think the penalty count was 15-5.

"We need to have a real good look at our discipline, you can't play with 14, and then after that we just have to stay a bit cleaner.

"I thought we were still in the game late, and thought we might just steal a pretty sensational victory or if not get a point out of it. but starting at the red card our discipline wasn't good enough to get away with anything at the end of the day," he said.

The Blues coach said that he was impressed by the way his side was able to adjust to the new gameplan he implemented at the half-time break.

"I was really pleased with the way the players reacted to the change, I felt very disappointed by the reasonably soft try just before half-time when the boys had hung in pretty well.

"So we adjusted and got on with it, we didn't commit to too many rucks and stayed on our feet and did really well.

"We didn't want to play any rugby in our own half, I got the winger to go to flanker so he probably won't be too happy, we shortened up the line-outs and then when we were in their half we just tried to play as much as we could.

"It wasn't easy but I thought we were able to implement a gameplan on the run that was relatively effective and kept us in the hunt," he added.

With just one log point from their first two games the Blues are already under pressure, and don't have long to recover before their clash with the Cheetahs on Friday.

"We are expecting a hard physical battle, they [Cheetahs] like playing side to side and love to run it but they have changed up their game a little bit as well so they are a wee bit more direct.

"It is a short turnaround for Friday night, so we have got a big week to get up physically and make sure that we match the big Cheetahs pack," he said.

By Michael de Vries