Super Rugby Pacific: No regrets for exiting Blues coach Leon MacDonald

A couple of days, perhaps a week or two, may need to pass before Leon MacDonald allows himself to reflect on the happy times at the Blues.

The agonising 52-15 defeat to the Crusaders in the Super Rugby Pacific semifinal on Friday night will ensure the pain lingers in the short-term.

Because, to state the obvious, that walloping in Christchurch wasn’t the way MacDonald wanted to end his five-year tenure at the Auckland-based franchise.

When the Blues arrived at Orangetheory Stadium to play a Crusaders team weakened by injuries, they were at reasonable odds to avenge their defeat to the same team in the final in Auckland last year.

Then everything blew apart, as the visitors sleepwalked their way to a humiliating loss; when the smoke finally cleared the bewildered Blues were left wondering how they could allow themselves to be so comprehensively dismantled by the defending champions.

When MacDonald, who will join incoming All Blacks coach Scott Robertson next year, spoke after the game he was blunt in his assessment.

They just didn’t bring the intensity, whether it be with their ball carries, ruck clean-outs or in the tackle, that’s required to crack a Crusaders side coached by Robertson.

“You have got to break through brick walls, really, with these guys and we were stopping at the contact,” MacDonald lamented. “We needed to try and go through them, and our cleaners weren’t blasting forward and digging the ball out of rucks.”

Once the post-season reviews and interviews are completed, MacDonald will clean out his desk and begin a new chapter in his career when he assists Robertson.

But before he hands back his laptop and closes the door of his office one last time – the Blues management are yet to appoint a replacement – MacDonald should look beyond the dreadful loss to the Crusaders and remember the good times, too.

He’s moulded them into a better unit than the one he inherited from Tana Umaga ahead of the 2019 season. In 2021 the team won the Super Rugby trans-Tasman title, and last year they hosted the SRP final only to be spiked by a dysfunctional lineout and a meek attack against the Crusaders.

MacDonald, a former All Blacks and Crusaders back whose previous experience at Super Rugby level had been as an assistant under Robertson at the Crusaders in 2017, said he has no regrets.

He admitted it had been a difficult decision to move his family north, he had previously been coaching Tasman, but was adamant it made him a better coach.

“It is definitely sad that it has ended. We would have loved it to have ended on a different note.”

Having to end his tenure on a dud note was painful. But he was also realistic.

“We had high hopes, and for it to end like this isn’t ideal obviously. But sport, it can be brutal at times. The highs are high and the lows are brutally low. You ride your emotions as well.

“You put your heart and soul into these big games, and you are thinking about them (for) months. And all doesn’t go the way you hoped, it’s always frustrating. But it is a good team in there, the Blues boys.”

Captain Dalton Papali’i admitted the Blues tried to get too “fancy” as they chased the game, when the Crusaders bolted out to a 18-0 lead inside 22 minutes. That didn’t end well. Instead of trying to grind their way out of the hole, they attempted to make dream offloads or rush their execution.

As a consequence they melted because their opponents brought the defensive and breakdown intensity, and superior intellect and inventiveness on attack.

MacDonald said it was the players he felt sympathy for, not himself. Not even when his dream of winning a SRP title had vanished, destroyed by the man he will assist next year.

“There’s been a lot of progress,” MacDonald maintained. “That can’t be clouded in losing a semifinal to the Crusaders in Christchurch, because it generally happens to most teams. We aren’t a great team yet, we aren’t nailing the big moments, the big games, that’s obviously frustrating.”