Still got the Blues

There used to be a saying in New Zealand rugby that went, “when Auckland rugby’s strong, NZ rugby’s strong”. These days if you asked any interested millennials to finish the same sentence they struggle. It’s not a criticism. It’s just that none of them were alive the last time Auckland was.

As we approach Super Rugby’s own ½ time break, the only title the Blues have hope of winning is as the comp’s biggest basket case. After another season of failing to make the play-offs, can anyone honestly argue they’ve improved? Because Friday night’s bumbling win over the Reds did little to suggest otherwise.

They are still way too loose, commit far too many unforced errors and unnecessary offloads while their option taking remains as consistent as Donald Trump’s attitude to global warming. Surely those who run the franchise can see that this ill-disciplined, helter-skelter, risk-taking way of playing isn’t working?

Or perhaps they’re simply taking their lead from SANZAAR, the comp’s parent body and current world champion of sporting administrative idiocy? The comparisons between the two are chillingly compelling:

• Too expansive too quickly
• Not enough time taken to consolidate
• Continual unnecessary risk-taking
• An inability or pig-headed refusal to seize control of what can be controlled and/or what is actually working for you
• An unexplained obsession with needing to do and try every attention-seeking miracle option available when all the paying public ask is for once just to play the percentages.

Having said all that, the Blues ongoing lack of onfield success is also quite puzzling. We can all see that what they keep doing is wrong, what’s more difficult to understand is why they keep doing it.

Game after game, season after season, disappointment after broken promise. If this was a relationship you’d have pulled out the old “it’s not you, it’s me” line years ago.

Is it a reflection of poor leadership or players that seem to maverick to care? They play like a team that is more interested in individual moment than collective achievement.

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Winning at sport comes down to many things, attitude being one of them. The Blues now do what the Hurricanes used to – they look flashy enough, play at breakneck speed, throw spectacular passes and regularly showcase their free-running ball-carrying try-scoring attacking ability. But. They lose all the close ones.

The ruthlessness of winning, that pragmatic attitude that demands you control ball, wind down clock, suffocate opposition and WIN GAME is as absent this year as it was during Pat Lam’s last in charge. And there’s nothing on view right now that says anything will change anytime soon.

End on a positive? At least Tana Umaga knows the next game on Wednesday is seriously winnable. After watching the Lions crawl to the finish line in Whangarei, the tourists look even worse than their Super Rugby namesakes.