When winners are losers it gives you the Blues
There’s only one football story in Auckland right now with all the ingredients of being an epic.
There’s one club defying the odds, producing compelling performances, with an emerging cohort of new stars, guided by a strong, unerring coach who knows how to connect with his players. This club is on track to make history — a genuine contender to win a title for the first time in 21 years.
The club is the Blues, and yet for Aucklanders, they may be thinking it is the Warriors such is their hype and media profile.
All credit to the Warriors who are languishing in 10th, have never won a title and yet continue to punch above their weight in terms of media coverage and drive the illusion of being a club dripping in success such is their celebrity following.
The statistics — be it attendance, viewership or playing numbers — continue to show that rugby is New Zealand’s preferred football code, and yet the Warriors are stealing the show while they languish outside the playoff zone.
The Blues’ inability to win the same media love must be both perplexing and heartbreaking.
In the past four years, they have tackled the legacy issues preventing the club from succeeding.
They began in 2020 an orchestrated campaign to reengage with Auckland schools and win back hearts and minds. The Blues don’t keep every Auckland teenager, but they do at least now keep all the ones they want.
They are also now retaining established players for longer and the likes of the Ioane brothers — Rieko and Akira — Patrick Tuipulotu, Ofa Tuungafasi and Dalton Papali’i, are all likely going to be lifelong Blues players, while it wouldn’t be a surprise if Caleb Clarke, Mark Tele’a and Harry Plummer also become local lads who never wanted to play for any other club.
The Blues have attracted top talent from other clubs — notably Beauden Barrett.
The Blues have also built a strong identity around their multicultural personnel and been better at getting players out in the community.
This is a club that for almost two decades after winning the title in 2003 could barely get anything right, but one which has worked methodically since 2020 to fix itself, and the results can be seen in the performances which have enabled the Blues to win the Trans-Tasman title in 2021, make the Super Rugby Pacific final in 2022, semifinal in 2023 and maybe go the whole hog this year.
The Blues are in the midst of their most compelling campaign in 21 years, but no one seemingly cares.
The Blues need Super Rugby to look closely at the NRL and work out how it magically helps a club like the Warriors in the art of generating hype.
How does a club with so little pedigree persuade Hollywood heavyweight Jack Black to wear a Warriors jersey and convince so many middle-class Aucklanders brought up playing and watching rugby to turn down a ticket to the Blues but pay over the odds to go to Mount Smart?
These are questions that the Blues need Super Rugby Pacific to answer because really, they should be the hottest ticket in town right now and the story driving the media agenda, because, unlike the Warriors, they are winning every week.