RNZ<\/a><\/p>\nWing Caleb Clark showcased his class with a hattrick of tries, as the Blues cruised home 29-13.<\/p>\n
Beauden Barrett earned a late call-up to start, after Stephen Perofeta was scratched with a calf complaint.<\/p>\n
The Blues made a blistering start, with a brace to Clark as the home side cut the Crusaders to ribbons out wide early.<\/p>\n
Sevens star Cody Vai’i then lit the stadium up with a stunner.<\/p>\n
Barrett fired a trademark crosskick to his winger, the bounce initially evaded Vai’i, but he went full stretch to gather and grass it inches before the deadball line.<\/p>\n
The Crusaders, who staged an incredible comeback against the Chiefs last weekend, began reducing the deficit, as All Blacks hooker Codie Taylor broke away from a maul and dotted down.<\/p>\n
The Cantabs went back to back, when halfback Noah Hotham went to the short-side and found first-five Rivez Reihana unmarked on the right flank to waltz over untouched, as the Blues held onto a 19-13 halftime lead.<\/p>\n
The second half began just as the first, with Clarke cruising into the corner for his third, courtesy of some slick hands through the Blues backline.<\/p>\n
The Crusaders were kept scoreless in the second half, as their clunky attack could make no inroads into the solid Blues defence.<\/p>\n
A late Barrett penalty sealed the deal for the Blues, just their third win in the last 13 encounters between the great rivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blues made a mockery of their recent record against the Crusaders, dominating the defending Super Rugby Pacific…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[33339,56380,111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-318113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-blues","9":"tag-crusaders","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}