Sam Darry's honest reflection after Hurricanes reality check

Stand-in Blues captain Sam Darry has reflected on his side’s heavy defeat at the hands of the high-flying Hurricanes in Wellington, where the home side proved their title credentials.

The Hurricanes had come into the top-of-the-table matchup on Saturday night having started the 2026 Super Rugby Pacific season in red-hot form, winning five out of their first six games.

Their 42-19 victory at Hnry Stadium in Wellington was a clinical showing, putting to bed the discussions around how Clark Laidlaw’s side’s “soft draw” was why the Wellington-based franchise was leading the competition.

Darry, who skippered Vern Cotter’s side against the Hurricanes, agreed that this result was not only frustrating but a bit of a reality check.

“Yeah, I think as we said, we got taught a bit of a lesson,” Darry told media in Wellington.

“It’s never nice getting 40 points put on you, it hurts. But I think the crucial part of it as well is that we learned from it. Still got a long way to go as a team.

“We know we can be a lot better and a lot more accurate in certain areas and if we can fix a few things up, we really trust our game.

“We trust the group we’ve got, so as long as we learn from it and improve, hopefully we’ll be better for it.”

Cotter, who will depart the Blues at the end of the season for the Queensland Reds, found the positives out of the game, despite agreeing that they were off the pace in a number of areas.

“I think that a lesson in rugby. They had the rugby on their fingertips, and we lost touch of our game a couple of times, and you can’t do that against these boys, they’re too good,” Cotter said post-match.

“So we’re back to having a good look at ourselves, which is probably good timing and we’ll start from scratch and work out what we can keep, because I think it’s quite a bit in that game that we can keep.

“There’s other bits that we need to keep, and other bits that we need to improve on over the next few weeks.”

One area identified by the 64-year-old Blues head coach was set piece, admitting they’ll have to look closely at what went wrong against the Hurricanes.

“I thought our two tries coming back gave us confidence, but then there were a couple of errors under pressure. I think we need to make better decisions on obviously the set piece, at times it was wobbly.

“So also, you need to have a good look at that. But it’s just, I think it was great for the boys to play against the team that was on, and I think probably the form team at the moment just to see where we’re at.”