Clueless head office approach to Auckland

aren’t on Auckland’s page.

Hey look, this being Auckland, we’d probably stuff it up anyway.

But we’d like to stuff it up our way and get a chance to value players for what we think they are worth.

The thing is, Auckland is an international city. We don’t like being run from Wellington.

We’re funny like that, just like Manchester United wouldn’t want to be run by a mob in London (or America, as it turned out) and the Green Bay Packers would rather blow up Lambeau Field than let a Chicago consortium tell them what to do.

Call us old romantics. Call us whatever you like — and you do.

But until they give our rugby team back to us, we basically don’t give a stuff about it and nor do a lot of the players quite clearly, I believe.

In the case of players like Piutau and Luatua, it would be so exciting if Auckland had the power to keep them, rather than rely on a central contract system based on All Black ratings. Steve Tew and his one-sizefits-all way of running the domestic scene hasn’t worked in Auckland. So why do they keep running it the same way, when the major market is a major stuff-up?

Auckland has to play by everybody else’s rules, instead of being allowed to act like a big city. We’re an odd mob, but being a branch office — an out-of-favour-one at that — doesn’t turn us on.

The Blues can’t even keep a star player and current All Black in the prime of his young life away from a bog-standard English club. Next thing, the Bognor Regis Pebbles will announce they’ve got Rieko Ioane.

I’m quite prepared to play the race card or any other card that might explain what should be the unexplainable. It seems Old White Dude World down at rugby HQ hasn’t got a clue about the largest Polynesian city in the world.

Yes, New Zealand, we’re different up here. What’s wrong with different? When rugby was great in this country, Christchurch, Wellington and Waikato were the enemy. The thought of Wellington effectively running Auckland rugby makes me puke.

All we want is a flamboyant team that might win a title now and then, something that reflects the place we live, rather than being the waste that spews out of a national crusade.

Silly us . . . but that’s us.