Otago has a lot of work to do next week.
They were routed 47-0 by Canterbury in a preseason game in Addington yesterday.
There was no livestream of the match, so their faithful were spared the grim footage.
The home team led 14-0 at the break and ran away with the fixture in the second half.
Otago open their NPC campaign against Southland in Invercargill on August 10.
They did have a good win against the Stags in a warm-up match in Gore late last month, but the heavy defeat to Canterbury will have dented any brewing confidence.
Otago had 12 Super Rugby players in their starting side and another five on the bench, so more resistance would have been expected.
Otago assistant coach Kane Jury took a glass-half-full approach.
"The first half was a tight arm-wrestle for 30-35 minutes," he said.
"We were able to soak up a bit of their pressure and put some on them as well. But what we found was as soon as we made an error we couldn’t recover and they capitalised."
The second half was "a bit of a repeat of that last five minutes".
"They put us under pressure and we were lacking a wee bit of accuracy. They just swooped on that and got some momentum and it was hard to stop.
"That first 35 minutes did give us a lot of confidence in what we are doing as well."
While the score was lopsided, Jury said the leadership group stood up.
"Our captains and our leadership group are taking charge and I think that will bode well for us moving forward, too."
Sam Gilbert and Christian Lio-Willie are the co-captains.
