Close to full strength, the Blues will be looking to continue their recent success against long-time derby rivals, the Chiefs, in Saturday's Super Rugby Pacific game in Hamilton.

While welcoming back All Blacks' first five-eighths Beauden Barrett, centre Rieko Ioane, prop Ofa Tuungafasi and No8 Hoskins Sotutu, they will be without wing Caleb Clarke. He joined prop Nepo Laulala with a three-week suspension.

Assistant coach Dan Halangahu said the Blues' view was that safety was important and they had no issues with the judgment against Clarke.

Clarke attempted to block a kick ahead and was not looking to hurt anyone, but unfortunately, he did, and the Blues coaching staff accepted the ruling.

"Is it fair? Yeah, it is. The framework's pretty clear, and they've applied it. Caleb admittedly got it wrong. He accepts he got it wrong. He wasn't going in there to hurt anyone, but, unfortunately, he did, so we accept what they've come up with," he said.

The issue for the team, and other sides, would be what they could do to change their technique in those situations. It could be that they didn't look to attempt charge downs of that type and to stay on the ground.

"We've got to keep the safety of the person who kicked the ball in front of mind. We can't excuse that charge down, and still make sure we keep that person safe. That's the one where we're going to have to adjust our thinking," he said.

Papalii said it was a shame they would be without Clarke because he was a big part of the team. 

"We've got to take it on the chin, and we can't really dwell on it because if we keep dwelling on it our head's not in the game," he said.

 While the Blues were edging up the points table, they have two tough challenges ahead with the Crusaders following the Chiefs.

They were trying to get better each week, but Saturday's match would be tough, especially in the loose.

"They're known for their physicality. We know what they're going to bring, but we know we've got to keep each other accountable here and lift each other.

"We want to go into the game with them matching our physicality, not us trying to react to them," he said.

"We know it's a big two weeks coming up, but, by now, we focus on each day, preparing for this game.

"We want to lift, we know we've got the potential, we've just got to go out there and do it," he said.

Papalii said they had been guilty of killing themselves by missing taking chances they had created.

"We'll got into a little bit of a streak where we are playing well for 30 minutes, and then we'll have a brain explosion, and we are 20 minutes on the back foot," he said.

"Then we start crawling our way back into it. We've got to keep stacking our moments, keep building them till we apply that pressure and get points. We've identified that and, like I said, it's easy talking about it, but we've just got to go out and do it."