Blackadder not impressed, despite win

A far from impressed Todd Blackadder's expecting plenty of improvements from his Crusaders side after their 15-11 victory over the Reds in Christchurch.

The hosts scrapped out a victory courtesy of five penalties to first five Tom Taylor, including two inside the final eight minutes.

Blackadder says his side made too many silly mistakes.

"It's really uncharacteristic. I'm not sure whether it was two big heavyweights slugging it out, and we couldn't quite catch each other for the knockout blow, but you know we're better than that. Just talking to the guys in the sheds now, we're pretty realistic."

Blackadder says there are plenty of things they'll need to work on this week.

The Reds were penalised for a string of ruck infringements, but a yellow card wasn't forthcoming.

Blackadder says he has no qualms as they got themselves into the mess.

"A couple of times we were on attack, we couldn't hold on to the ball and they got turnovers, so I wasn't so focused on them and their infringing, more on what we weren't doing, and that was the disappointing thing."

Reds coach Ewen McKenzie's lamenting poor decision making in his side's loss. He says his side had opportunities to win the match.

"We had moments to be able to close the game out and we just didn't take. There were a couple of critical moments in the second half were we just needed to play the right end of the field. We had chances but we chose to run instead of kick, etcetera."

McKenzie says the heavy penalty toll against his side was a surprise.

"We give away an average of 10 penalties a game, suddenly it was 18 today and only 7 against them. Obviously they were really good and we were really bad."

The Crusaders are now second in the New Zealand conference, seven points behind the Chiefs and fifth overall.

Photo: Crusaders' Zac Guildford (Photosport)