There was an eerie sense of unwelcome deja vu for Blues coach Leon MacDonald, as he took in the final moments of his team's 20-13 defeat to the Chiefs on Saturday.
The last quarter was almost an exact replica of what took place against the Crusaders at Eden Park a fortnight ago, when the Blues - again, with significant advantages in territory and possession - couldn't crack the opposition tryline for the decisive score.
The dying stages played out in freakishly similar fashion, with a sustained tryline assault ultimately snuffed out by a determined defensive stand.
And the post-match rhetoric from MacDonald followed suit, as he took solace in his team's performance, which he maintains is continuing to trend upwards, despite the result.
"A tough one to swallow, a little bit like the Crusaders a couple weeks back," MacDonald said.
"I felt like we had plenty of possession, territory and pressure and good parity in a lot of areas. To not be able to get the win is pretty frustrating.
"But we're moving in the right direction. There are lots of parts of the game that are trending the right way.
"Often we talk about our weeks and you can see it building through the way we're training and engaging during the weeks
"Although the results aren't going the way that we want, we know that they'll come if we continue to keep working hard and backing the process, which is important."
On the back of their superior setpiece, the Blues worked hard to put themselves into positive attacking positions but were let down by untimely errors.
Enjoying over 60 percent of possession and territory, the Blues almost doubled their opposition's run metres (401m to the Chiefs' 221m). The hosts made over 100 more tackles than the Blues, and they needed every last one of them.
Again, some of those mistakes came in familiar form. Most notably, Beauden Barrett's failure to ground the ball for a try after he'd crossed the chalk, which conjured more haunting memories of their thrilling clash with the defending champions, when James Tucker and Hoskins Sotutu both spilled the pill over the line.
Although in fairness, both were under more duress than Barrett, whose effort had his coaches throwing their heads back in frustration, as would a couple of other painful moments of inaccuracy with the tryline begging.
"Not putting the ball down in the in-goal seems to be a recurring theme," MacDonald noted.
"Just little errors that are popping in and sometimes that happens when you're trying too hard, and you can't fault the effort and energy from the guys. That's not just on the grass tonight, that's through the whole week.
"We put in a really good shift today and sometimes that happens in sport, when you just don't quite get those rubs of the green.
"[We're]not losing faith or confidence. We're heading in the right direction and good things will come if we continue to keep working the way we have been."
With the benefit of hindsight, captain Dalton Papali'i couldn't help second guessing some of his decisions in the Chiefs' red zone, when the Blues opted to pack down a scrum or go to a lineout rather than take straightforward opportunities to kick a penalty.
"After the game, I was thinking of those 'what ifs'," admitted Papali'i.
"I went and talked to our leaders out there and we all agreed that's what we wanted to do. We had the dominance I felt like at scrumtime.
"It is what it is now. We've just got to take the learnings from the game and move on."
For MacDonald, the biggest takeaway from the match was that his fifth-placed team are firmly in the mix as one of the competition's elite teams.
While they're yet to record consecutive wins so far this season, he's seen enough from his troops to feel confident about their prospects at the business end of the campaign.
"That we're right in the hunt," he replied, when asked about the lessons learned in Hamilton.
"'[We're] not far away at all. If anything, we should be feeling pretty excited around what we could be and where we're heading in our game.
"The boys are feeling disappointed but we don't really have a lot of time to mope. We need to get our chins up pretty quickly because the Rebels are a bloody good team and we need to go over there and get a job done.
"I actually think we played better tonight than last year here when we won, which is ironic. But that's sports sometimes.
"Tonight's not ideal, but as long as we keep getting better, we're going to give ourselves a good opportunity to be in the hunt in the end."
The Blues will have the services of Mark Telea for the Melbourne jaunt, after the stand-out wing took his All Blacks-mandated rest week against the Chiefs.
No. 8 Hoskins Sotutu and fullback Stephen Perofeta will take their turns against the Rebels, MacDonald confirmed.
