Blair Baxter has led Matatū through some historic moments. The head coach led them to their first Super Rugby Aupiki title in 2023 and returned this season when they broke the New Zealand record for a standalone women’s game with a crowd of 11,793 fans in round one. He will add a couple more to his resume on Saturday when Matatū host the first Aupiki final in the South Island against the Blues — and would love another record crowd at One New Zealand Stadium in Christchurch. “There’s lots of little firsts — it just brings another level of excitement and edge,’’ Baxter said. “We would love for more people to turn up. We can’t appreciate the fans enough and it was pretty special to create history round one and we want to do it again on Saturday.’’ Matatū have played an exciting brand of rugby this season, but have dropped the last two games after going unbeaten through the first four rounds. They lost to the Blues 38-29 last week, but had done enough to secure the home final. Baxter said his side continued to strive to be better each week and had not been “on the right side of the outcome the last two weeks’’ “We’re still doing great stuff and the dress rehearsal last week will enable us to play some quality footy.’’ Matatū had a lot of respect for the Blues, who are packed with Black Ferns and X-factor talent across the park, he said. “What we also saw on the weekend was opportunity. “We know we need to be better at applying pressure on both sides of the ball, and particularly around our 22. We’ve probably left a few points out there. “If you knock off for one thing, or you make a poor decision, they can burn you. “We saw that when they went 90-100 metres on one of those tries off set piece. “We need to be sharper there. We’ve absolutely trained that this week and I feel like the girls will be on.”
