Hyland double sets up comfortable win for Blues over Sunwolves
Blues registered their second win of the season
©PA
Sunwolves 10 - 24 Blues, Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium
Jordan Hyland scored a try apiece on either half as Blues completed a 10-24 win over Sunwolves in their Super Rugby clash at Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium on Saturday.
This is Blues' second win of the season and despite that, they continue to be at the bottom of the New Zealand Conference while Sunwolves are at the bottom of the Australian Conference.
The Blues suffered an early setback when lock Patrick Tuipulotu was sin-binned for no-arms tackle on Kotaro Matsushima and Yu Tamura landed a penalty to get Sunwolves off the mark.
The home side soon increased their lead when Hayden Parker, who came as a replacement for Tamura, played a perfect role in intercepting Blues' defence and offloaded Timothy Lafaele for a 20th minute try and the conversion made it 10-0.
The response from Blues finally came in the 28th minute when Hyland went past a couple of defenders and crashed past the line to reduce the deficit to five points at the end of the first half.
The visitors went on to claim the lead for the first time in the game with number eight Akira Ioane crossing over in the 49th minute that was improved by Stephen Perofeta.
With Sunwolves struggling to score a point in the second half, Dalton Papali’i riding on a pass from Kara Pryor went past five defenders to score Blues' third try and Hyland capped off a fantastic game for the visitors with his 76th-minute touchdown - his second in the game - to seal a 10-24 victory.
