'Maybe they can do the same': Chiefs coach wants a favour from the Blues

Who would’ve thought that the No.1 regular season-ranked Chiefs would want the Blues to do them a favour in the Super Rugby Pacific semi-finals, but that’s the case after the Blues beat the Chiefs in Hamilton on Saturday night.

For the Chiefs to host the final in two weeks, the Blues will need to beat the Crusaders in Christchurch and the Chiefs will need to beat the Brumbies.

The 2025 Super Rugby Pacific draw gives the highest-ranked losing team the “lucky loser” tag, where they get an opportunity in the semi-finals despite losing in the qualifying final.

This ended up being the Chiefs, after their one-point, 20-19, defeat at FMG Stadium Waikato in Hamilton.

Chiefs head coach Clayton McMillan hadn’t thought about the tournament layout like that, but told media post-match in Hamilton that they did the Blues a favour last year by beating the Hurricanes in the semi-final, and will want the Blues to beat the Crusaders this week as they hope to host the final.

“Yeah, well, I mean, at the end of the day, we’re either going to be playing a good Brumbies team or a good Hurricanes team, so we just need to focus on that.

“But if we’re good enough to win that, we probably did the Blues a bit of a favour last year by winning a semi-final, so maybe they could do the same, but yeah we will just worry about ourselves and the rest will take care of itself.”

McMillan doesn’t believe there was any psychological factor in the loss, despite the Chiefs knowing that they had a home semi-final next week.

“No, not at all, we wanted to win this game and put the Blues to bed because wins like this will just fuel more confidence.

“So, yeah, we don’t enter into games thinking about next week. It’s what’s directly in front of us, we’ve been pretty consistent with that and our preparation, how the effort that we put in tonight was reflective of a team, one that really wanted to win.”

The 50-year-old head coach admits they could have been more adventurous in the first half when they had a lot of possession.

“Some of those positions and effort can take their toll on the opposition, we probably could have been a little bit more adventurous, instead of trying to bang through the front door all the time, but we also accumulated some penalties and eventually it became a yellow card.

“So, you know, there’s a bit of a double-edged sword there, it would have been certainly nicer to have scored some points in the first half, the Cortez Ratima opportunity was an obvious one.”

The home side on Saturday night were leading by thirteen with just under 20 minutes to go, but let the Blues back in the game after replacement Blues hooker Kurt Eklund pushed his way over the line.

McMillan felt like his side had control of the game, but gives credit to the Blues for the way they were able to get back in the game.

“Yeah, I think in a lot of respects, I thought we were controlling the game nicely and accumulating threes. We got that try just after halftime and on another night, we close it out, but again, we were just inaccurate in the last sort of 15 minutes and opened the door for the Blues to come back, and they were good enough to do that.”

McMillan had some mixed injury news after the match, saying that Chiefs midfielder Quinn Tupaea should be available next week and would have likely played if the game against the Blues was a sudden-death encounter.

“Yeah, good, he probably could have played today.”

Chiefs captain Luke Jacobson was withdrawn from the match just an hour before kickoff, with a minor injury from last weekend’s clash against the Highlanders.

“Yeah he picked up a stinger last week, and everything was progressing, he trained all week, but just in our captain’s run he just didn’t feel that he was at 100% and made the call to step outside.

“I thought we dealt with it really well. Kaylum Boshier is a quality rugby player and when he was on the field, he did really well.”

The Chiefs head coach had an update on bruising loose forward Simon Parker, who limped off in the second half with an ankle injury, while replacement lock Josh Lord also was substituted just after coming on.

“Yeah so his ankle doesn’t look great (Simon Parker), and Josh Lord came off for an HIA, not sure how that progressed, but he obviously didn’t come back on the field.”