KEY POINTS:
The Blues left Hamilton last night with four points, an individual try-scoring record and a suspected broken bone.
The unbridled joy of toasting the Chiefs on their home patch and seeing Doug Howlett become the record try-scorer in Super rugby history with 58, will be off-set by the
news that Luke McAlister has a suspected broken cheek bone.
Last year McAlister suffered a broken jaw at roughly the same stage of the competition and the Blues descended into farce.
But this year, there seems little chance of the same capitulation. The Blues of 2007 are not the flaccid lot that went horribly limp in 2006. Last night was evidence of that.
They were under pressure for most of the first half and barely clinging on. If the Chiefs had settled early in the second period, got the first score, then there would have really been trouble at mill for the visitors.
It didn't happen like that, though. The Blues tightened-up and unlike last year, didn't resort to individual flair to try and save the day.
They took their time at set-pieces. They dropped the body positions in contact, started protecting the ball and tackled, tackled and tackled again.
"That was exactly the sort of game anticipated," said Blues coach David Nucifora. "A couple of boys described it as trench warfare out there. The physicality of the game was right up there. These sorts of games hold you in good stead come semifinal time.
"We started to get in behind them in the second half and they couldn't slow our ball down then. That allowed us to play our game."
It also allowed Isa Nacewa to stand closer to the gain line and, knowing that without McAlister they were a little light on creativity, simplify the strategy to exclusively bringing the first runner back on the cut.
It wasn't expansive but it was clever as Sam Tuitupou was able to make big yardage by charging up the channel being defended by his former team-mate Tasesa Lavea.
So too was Isaia Toeava, who really does look as good as the All Black selectors said he was last year.
Toeava is unquestionably the form centre in New Zealand and has discovered the welcome knack of beating the first tackle.
It was one ferocious run from the young centre early in the second half that changed the tone of the contest. Toeava kept bouncing tacklers out of the way and with every flattened black jersey the Blues started believing more and more they could win.
Once Keven Mealamu had burrowed over from a well-worked lineout drive and then Howlett had been set free to claim his record score in the 61st minute, there was never any doubt the Blues were going to win.
"Teams like this have bullied us in the past and for us to be able to stand up and play them at their own game is a real pat on the back for our players," said Nucifora.
"We are prepared to stand up and play the game several different ways. We have played a lot of great open football at times but you need these sorts of games where you just have to tough it out."
That ability to tough it out didn't appear to be there in the first half when they were rocked by the continued aggression and cohesion of the Chiefs who were galvanised by the presence of Keith Robinson.
There is something about Robinson, maybe just his very presence on the field, that gets previously dormant synapses twinkling.
His team-mates, so reticent and uncertain in previous weeks, were suddenly believing in themselves as if, almost by a process of osmosis, they had inherited some of Robinson's intense ferocity.
The lock thrust a giant mitt to grip the throat of Anthony Boric in the first minute, looked him in the eye and effectively said to his opponent, come and have a go, son, if you think you are hard enough.
We can only wonder the extent of the collateral damage had Robinson made such an invitation to captain Troy Flavell.
But the Blues skipper was a late withdrawal due to a niggling groin injury and Robinson's gauntlet remained where he threw it for a full 40 minutes.
The tragedy for the Chiefs was that they couldn't convert their early pressure into points and ironically, given Robinson's presence, it was the lineout that was so often the source of their problems.
Sitting on 17 points this morning, their problems look a whole heap more serious than a malfunctioning set-piece.
* Chiefs 11 (T. Lavea try; S. Donald 2 pens) Blues 18 (J. Kaino, K. Mealamu, D. Howlett tries; I. Nacewa pen)
