James Parsons

I was big on hoping that all the baggage was left at the old ground, but no, it's certainly travelled.

It's travelled very well.

The Crusaders were just a much more desperate outfit and probably, I think more importantly, their attacking structures allowed them to create a lot more.

94% was because there wasn't a lot of deception from what you'd seen the week before against the Reds and almost played within themselves.

The old idea of probably playing the Crusaders and getting the ball down there didn't quite suit under the roof and sort of backfired on them a little bit.

They scored some long-range tries to keep themselves in the game, but nothing sort of was created in terms of that manipulation of the defence where they could sort of puppeteer it.

But statistically though, they dominated the game line, they dominated the lightning quick ball, but to only beat nine defenders and have three line breaks, it just, I don't know, it just looked like it was a reserved game plan in the hope that I suppose there could be parity and then bring on players like Bowden Barrett and Finlay Christie and ice the game.

Like I actually, when the team was picked, I was like, man, this is a, you know, smart way of picking a team to take on the Crusaders, but

Yeah, I don't know.

It just seemed a little bit one-dimensional.

And look, credit to the Crusaders, because I think their attack won the game.

They were massive, and Leicester was an absolute freak for the most part of it.

But I don't know, like the Blues... I don't know, momentum's so important.

You look at the Hurricanes, they had a lot of disruption, a lot of changes, but their momentum, their ability to trust their systems to create opportunities still came through.

And I suppose for the Blues, I think they'd be...

I think they'll be left wondering a few questions that need to be answered in the coming weeks.

Where do you feel he had a big impact, though?

I felt as soon as he moved to the midfield, it showed he can still do the turnovers, he can still hover in and around the breakdown.

He scooped up, did that grubber through for the try.

I'm completely on board with it now.