The Chiefs have hit the halfway mark in their Super Rugby campaign still playing second fiddle to the unbeaten Hurricanes in the New Zealand Conference.
But they have managed to keep ahead of the rest of the pack, albeit to some extent through extra games, and are confident they can come out of this weekend's first bye with almost all their players fit and available to attack the second half of the season.
They also have a tough chunk of their draw behind them, still have both their games against the Hurricanes to come and are in a position to push their bid for a playoff spot if they are consistently good enough.
The Chiefs have emerged from their first eight matches of a 16-match regular season with six wins and two losses for 28 points - three behind the Hurricanes, who have a game in hand.
The Highlanders have two games in hand after having their second bye at the weekend and they are eight points behind - also with two losses.
With the Hurricanes having their second bye this weekend it won't be until the Chiefs' second bye after a three-match block against the Crusaders (away), Force (home) and Rebels (away) that a clearer picture will emerge as the number of games played starts to even up within the NZ Conference.
The Blues might have had seven straight losses, but they have earned consolation bonus points for finishing with seven points from five of them and they again made the Chiefs work hard for a local derby victory, 23-16, in a real arm wrestle at Waikato Stadium on Saturday night.
It was hard-earned, as most local conference wins are, and if anything the Chiefs can be relieved they don't have to play the Blues again this season because the latter are sure to cause some upsets in the second half of the competition.
The Chiefs now have a platform from which to launch their bid for home playoffs.
"We're not happy with the two losses, but we've got ourselves into a reasonable position," Chiefs head coach Dave Rennie said.
"I guess if we look back we've played the Blues a couple of times, we've already had our trip to Africa, played the Stormers over there, played the Crusaders once and Brumbies already so it's been a reasonably challenging draw.
"So to come out with six wins - I guess if we'd talked about it at the start of the year we might have been reasonably happy with that.
"The fact we lost two of those games when we played very poorly is very frustrating but it is what it is and you've got to look forward so it will be nice to get a few bumps and bruises out of the way and have a bit of time to prepare for the Crusaders."
The Chiefs have successfully brought star All Blacks lock Brodie Retallick back from a five-week injury layoff with 80 minutes against the Blues, while loose forward Liam Squire got six minutes, and expect to have Sonny Bill Williams (late scratching on Saturday with a niggly knee injury), Tim Nanai-Williams (broken finger) and Charlie Ngatai (hamstring/back) back in contention for their backline, which will add much more potency to their attack.
The Chiefs will look at what worked and didn't work over the first half of the season and particularly on Saturday night against the Blues where they dominated the scrums, but weren't able to launch many attacks due to penalties and kicking options, and where they had their second-ruck ball slowed down by the visitors.
After a dominant first half, the Chiefs conceded the lead to the Blues just 12 minutes into the second half and it took the boot of Aaron Cruden and a long distance try to standout winger/fullback Tom Marshall from a huge counter-attack break by No 8 Michael Leitch to seal the deal.
"At the initial strike we got over the advantage line relatively easily but, while they didn't tend to contest that, they threw big numbers into the second ruck and were able to slow our ball down and get a [defensive] line in front of us," Rennie said.
"Where we've been at our best - in the Crusaders game and the Stormers game - we launched really well, got fast ball from multi-phase and got opportunities to play off that."
Where the Chiefs were much better than recent outings was with their discipline, conceding just seven penalties, and to a lesser extent with their ball handling.
However, they are still vulnerable to teams targeting them at the breakdowns and wary of referees watching them closely there, so how they handle that area for the rest of the season will have a huge bearing on just how far they progress.
