Is this the year the Blues get it right?
New Zealand's masters of Super Rugby underachievement are hopeful this is their year. Again. Marc Hinton reports in the fourth of our Super Rugby buildup series.
It has become a now annual event you can rely on like the February summer bloom. The Blues assemble for another Super season pledging this is their year, that they’ve learned the lessons of failures past and that it’s redemption time . . . only to roll out yet another sub-standard effort and flatter once again to deceive.
Blues fans should be handed boxes of tissues with their season tickets. There has been a lot to weep about over the last decade of ineptitude in New Zealand’s most populous and well-resourced rugby region. The more they promise, the more they disappoint.
The Crusaders may specialise in finals footy, but the Blues are unequivocally the masters of under-achievement and champions of talking themselves up, only to fall in a heap when it matters.
The record book testifies to this. They last played finals football – and had a winning record – in 2011. Since then their overall finishing positions read: 12th, 10th, 10th, 14th, 11th, 9th, 14th and 13th. They have finished last in the New Zealand conference for the last six seasons on the hop.
Not coincidentally, their head-to-heads against their fellow Kiwi sides – their measuring sticks – is an embarrassment.
Take tonight’s season-opening opponents, the Chiefs, for example. The Blues did scramble a 23-8 home victory over their closest neighbours in their most recent matchup last season. But prior to that the Hamilton outfit had rattled off a 15-match unbeaten run (14 victories, 1 draw) against their northern neighbours.
It’s a similar story against all their Kiwi peers. They simply don’t measure up, even if they’re more often than not right in the contest against their main rivals.
But there is some hope at Alexandra Park in 2020, more than the usual candy-floss optimism and enthusiasm that accompanies this time of the year when they at least start