Umaga: Blues 'not getting reward for discipline'
The Blues next face the Kings, Lions, Force, Crusaders and the Hurricanes and the Blues boss is well aware of what it'll take to have a chance at bagging a win against their South African and New Zealand counterparts.
"It's always good to get a win," said Umaga.
"We've got some ground to make as everybody knows and it's the first of five games that we can hopefully make a push for it, but we have to play for 80 minutes if we want to do that.
"We give away too may penalties inside our 22, we make errors inside our half and we can't get out and that makes it easy for them.
"We've been working hard on our discipline all year, yet we're still not getting any reward from it."
The former All Blacks captain also wants his side to improve on their 50-50 passes and learn to cope under the pressure applied by the opposition by getting their execution right.
"Sometimes we just need a conventional pass, that'd do sometimes, but that's the way we play and we just need to make sure that we get good at it," said Umaga.
"Especially under pressure when we're getting tired, it's all right when everyone's fresh and they're training and they throw it around and it seems to stick, but when you've got a team trying to stop you it put a little extra pressure on you.
James Parsons, who took over the captaincy after Jerome Kaino relinquished the leadership during the week, admitted that he was feeling the pressure when the Rebels scored two late tries and were a whisker away from a possible match-winning third when penalised in a line-out drive on the tryline.
"My heart's still racing," said Parsons.
"Obviously we didn't close it out as we would have liked.
"We will take confidence from this.
"We didn't finish well but there were some good things and we're excited for the trip to Africa," he added as the Blues head to South Africa to play the Kings and Lions.
