MacDonald didn't hang the 20-year-old out to dry, or make feeble excuses. Instead he recalled how he had played with a rookie called Dan Carter in Canterbury, who he saw miss some big kicks early in his career. "So it can happen to the best of them," he said.
The Blues have a sorry record of chewing up and spitting out coaches. There was a player rebellion against Taranaki's Jed Rowlands in 2000. Murray Deaker at the time summed it up, by writing, "Rowlands was shafted by players too gutless to say anything to his face." There was the massive bust-up between Australian David Nucifora and Ali Williams, who Nucifora sent home from South Africa in 2007. Nucifora lasted just one more season. Local heroes Pam Lam and Sir John Kirwan came and went.
A man who has MacDonald's back as he adjusts to being in the hottest coaching seat in New Zealand Super Rugby, is Peter Sloane, the last coach to take the Blues to a title in 2003.
Sloane arrived at the Blues, like MacDonald, as a former assistant coach of a title winning Crusaders team.
Sloane had a running joke when he was Robbie Deans' assistant in Christchurch in the late 1990s. If any backs got too near, Andrew Mehrtens would report, Sloane would say, "Get out of the way you little lizards, or you'll get crushed."
Sloane came to the Blues in 2002, he told me this week, knowing the team's golden age, when men like Sean Fitzpatrick, Zinzan Brooke and Michael Jones, gave them a huge edge at scrum time and on defence, was over.
NZ Rugby gave special dispensation to the Blues to bring in a French prop Christian Califano, for a maximum of two seasons, to try to stem problems in the front row.
Like MacDonald, Sloane inherited a Blues team that had been embarrassingly bad. In 2001 they'd slumped to second to last on the table.
"It takes time," said Sloane. "The win in 2003 didn't come from nowhere. It was based on the work and changes we made in 2002 (when the Blues finished sixth). We introduced young players like Keven Mealamu, Angus Macdonald and Ali Williams, who were basically boys, but played like men."
There were cultural changes too. Sloane says he knew he needed to learn, and to get to understand as much as he could about the Polynesian players who in 2003, as they do now, formed the backbone of the Blues. As one example, the Blues had an Academy in Nandi, and on his first visit there Sloane chose to stay in a nearby village, rather than in a hotel.
"I realised early on that with some of the Polynesian players it was very important that if you were going to criticise, it was important to stay close so there could be a verbal cuddle as well."
He also made a change when it was time for sessions on game analysis. "I knew from working at the Crusaders and the Highlanders that basically you can't go for more than about 20 minutes before people switch off.''
Sloane asked Sean Fitzpatrick, who was now the team manager, to hit up a sponsor for half a dozen large mattresses, which they scattered around the team room, so it looked more like a marae, or a Pasifika meeting house.
"At the next analysis session, I looked out and there were these big guys like Dylan Mika and Moses Tuiali'I half lying on each other. They were relaxed, but at the same time really paying attention."
The only moments of tension Sloane recalls came after a 22-11 loss to the Highlanders in Dunedin. The players were keen to have after-match drinks. But they were flying to South Africa the next day to face the Bulls in Pretoria, so Sloane chartered a plane to get them back to Auckland that night.
"I didn't think they'd travel too well if they were on the hops with the scarfies in Dunedin. Not all the boys were thrilled, but we got over it pretty quickly. One of the things with the Blues is that they usually enjoy travelling. When they're all in Auckland it isn't that easy to spend time together. The sheer size of Auckland meant we had to introduce things as basic as providing meals because it wasn't practical for players to train, go home for lunch, and then come back for an afternoon session."
If there is one element in turning the current Blues from easy beats to a competitive outfit that Sloane believes in, it's the character of Leon MacDonald.
"With any team honesty, loyalty, and trust are vital, and they need to be in your DNA. In Leon the Blues have an outstanding person, with all those qualities."
