Crusaders coach Todd Blackadder says that he expects his team to make plenty of improvements after they held on to beat the Reds 15-11 in Christchurch.

The Crusaders ground out a victory over the Super Rugby champions courtesy of five penaties from Tom Taylor - two of which were in the last 10 minutes.

Blackadder says that his seven time champions made too many silly mistakes in the match.

"It's really uncharacteristic," Blackadder told NewztalkZB.

"I'm not sure whether it was two big heavyweights slugging it out, and we couldn't quite catch each other for the knockout blow, but you know we're better than that."

"Just talking to the guys in the sheds now, we're pretty realistic."

With around 10 minutes left on the clock the Reds were leading but they were penalised by referee Bryce Lawrence.

The Reds got into the lead through a Mike Harris penalty which came from Wyatt Crockett's yellow card shoulder charge on Will Genia.

Blackadder says that even though the Crusaders were shown a yellow card he had no qualms about the refereeing.

"A couple of times we were on attack, we couldn't hold on to the ball and they got turnovers, so I wasn't so focused on them and their infringing, more on what we weren't doing, and that was the disappointing thing."

Reds coach Ewen McKenzie lamented his team's poor decision making in the loss and said that they had opportunities to win the match.

"We had moments to be able to close the game out and we just didn't take."

"There were a couple of critical moments in the second half were we just needed to play the right end of the field. We had chances but we chose to run instead of kick, etcetera."

McKenzie said that he felt the heavy penalty toll against his side was a surprise.

"We give away an average of 10 penalties a game, suddenly it was 18 today and only 7 against them. "

"Obviously they were really good and we were really bad."