Wooden spoon battle
No great surprise Blues are still losing but Chiefs look surprisingly meek this season
If the Blues are a broken armchair in your lounge — familiar, overstuffed but not quite fit for purpose — the Chiefs are a new kitchen table which collapses just as you’re about to eat dinner.
The struggles of the Blues over the past seven or eight years are so well known that unfortunately there is almost a sense of comfort in them starting a new Super Rugby season with three losses, a streak which stretches to five if the end of last season is included.
But for the Chiefs to lose three in a row — including leaking 50 points to the Brumbies and now, incredibly, losing 30-15 to the Sunwolves in Hamilton — makes you wonder if there has been a glitch in the rugby matrix.
It was the Sunwolves’ first away win in the four years of their existence. And they could have won by more. They beat the Chiefs all over the Waikato Stadium pitch but what will concern coach Colin Cooper and their supporters the most is that the perennial battlers based in Japan just looked more up for it.
The Chiefs’ metamorphosis from relative easy-beats to competition winners in 2012 and 2013 was based on picking players who worked hard and wouldn’t concede a centimetre.
They used to be particularly tough in the contact areas and pushed the laws to the limits and beyond. But there was little of that on display on Saturday night.
It was a stunningly poor way for the players to mark lock Brodie Retallick’s 100th game for the side and his presentation afterwards in front of a rapidly dwindling crowd was toe-curlingly awkward. He deserved far better.
There are few expectations at the Blues following the installation of Leon MacDonald as head coach other than improvement, no matter how small.
There were some good signs against the Crusaders in round one, but they have quickly reverted to type, and for them to make the playoffs now would require another glitch in the matrix.
But given the Chiefs’ draw over the next four weeks — three difficult away matches, including a trip to South Africa and Argentina — the question is, can the Blues avoid the New Zealand Conference wooden spoon this year? Will it be the Chiefs who take that dubious honour?
In what is looming as a crucial game in the context of the booby prize, the two teams play each other on April 13.
The spotlight has already fallen on Chiefs coach Cooper, who is in his second year of a threeseason deal. Cooper did well to take an injuryravaged
side to the playoffs last year but there is unlikely to be a repeat of that in 2019 and the pressure will be building.
Asked about the team’s performance this year and Cooper’s future, Chiefs boss Mike Collins told Stuff: “What I’d say is that Colin’s our head coach and we just need to chuck all the support and resources round the whole coaching team that we can.
“It’s way too early and too distracting to be talking about anything else at this point in the competition.”
And yet the questions the Blues board have had to consider for the past seven years have suddenly become relevant at the Chiefs headquarters in Ruakura — how bad does it need to get and when do you pull the trigger?
“I don’t want to comment on that and provide a distraction,” Collins said. “We’ve got a massive week coming up against the Crusaders.
“We’re fully behind this group at the moment. We’ll go through this campaign and see where we are at the finish.”