Wellington coach Jamie Joseph conceded the better team had won following Canterbury's 28-20 Air New Zealand Cup final victory in Christchurch.

Two tries to Colin Slade helped Canterbury to an 18-3 half-time lead and that deficit proved too big to overcome for Joseph's side, despite their improved showing in the second half which saw them reduce the gap to 25-20 with five minutes to go.

"There's obvious disappointment from not having won the game. But the guys are fairly pragmatic that they did all they could in terms of the effort, particularly in the second half," the Wellington coach said.

"I think we lost to a better team tonight and that's always hard to take initially. But rugby players being rugby players understand that someone has to win and someone has to lose."

Wellington were on the back foot inside the second minute when Canterbury full-back Slade went over for the first of his tries and they never really recovered with a solitary Piri Weepu penalty all they had to show for their first-half efforts, where they chose to adopt a kick-chase game-plan with minimal success.

"In the first 40 minutes we weren't able to play and I think a lot of that credit goes to the way Canterbury approached the game and played the game," said Joseph.

"We didn't actually do anything wrong we just couldn't get into the game. I take my hat off to Canterbury for that."

Wellington changed their tactics in the second half and looked far more threatening with ball in hand, but it took an intercept try for Alipati Leuia and for Scott Fuglistaller to go over when Slade was in the sin-bin to get Wellington close.

"In the second half when they kicked it we ran it. That's probably the biggest reason the boys are disappointed because maybe if we'd done that from the start things would have been different," lamented Joseph.

It was Wellington's fourth successive Air New Zealand Cup final loss and Canterbury captain George Whitelock said the plan had been to put their opponents under pressure early.

"We'd talked all week about starting well and putting a lot of pressure on them and get that self-doubt into their mind," said Whitelock.

"We did that and we had a really good first half. At half-time we talked about not letting them back in but we actually gave them a sniff.

"We went away from what we were talking about doing at half-time and we played in our own half and they got that intercept and the game was back on.

"We put a bit of pressure on ourselves but that's finals footy. Wellington came back really strong and showed what a classy side they are. They wanted it pretty badly but we wanted it more."