Dust off your old Blues jersey and wear it proudly
Auckland has been the unsolvable riddle for New Zealand Rugby this past decade — not quite a rugby wasteland as such, but a city with giant participation black spots where whole communities have cared little for the game.
The national body has thrown time and money at the city, trying all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas in its quest to drive up interest and get more kids — more people — playing and watching.
It has, until now, been an impossible job. Success stories have been few and far between and rugby has remained mostly anathema to those not familiar with it and it hasn’t held the attention or interest of those who are.
Auckland sprawls for as far as the eye can see now, on track to be home for two million people soon enough, and yet the more it grows, the less likely it is that rugby will be the chosen sport of the majority.
There are pockets of the city where the game remains strong and the traditional boys’ schools continue to grab the best athletes and win the
majority of resources. The city’s fractured relationship with the sport is best epitomised, however, by the failure to make any kind of footprint with the Asian community and the low participation rates in South Auckland.
What’s different today and may change the whole dynamic of the city’s relationship with the game is that the Blues are now winners.
They have won a title and everyone loves the sense of achievement and certainty that emanates from a winner, even one that feels just a touch economy class,
as Super Rugby Transtasman does.
Winners have a different ability to appeal to a wider audience, and winners are lovable, supportable and capable of fostering a hitherto unknown sense of pride.
Auckland is a city of changing socio-demographics. Immigration, pre-Covid, was no longer predominantly driven by Brits arriving with an ingrained knowledge and understanding of sports popular in the old Commonwealth.
As the city grew, rugby’s popularity and influence became disproportionately less as more people arrived with virtually no knowledge of its peculiarities and no incentive to bother finding out.
There was no gravitational pull towards the sport because there was no North Star leading the way in Super Rugby. The Blues were not a magnet attracting new followers because it’s a hard and fast rule in sport that all the marketing dollars in the world can’t buy what success can.
Stick a billboard up that says “Come to Eden Park” and no one will. Win a title and the world is suddenly interested.
Win a title and that old Blues jersey, the one bought back in the mid-1990s when the team was winning, can be dusted off and worn again.
Win a title and those who previously didn’t care about either the Blues or rugby will instantly be thinking about buying a ball and maybe a jersey and perhaps heading down the park to see if they can pass it like Finlay Christie or kick it like Zarn Sullivan.
This is not how things have previously been. New arrivals to Auckland have no doubt looked around once they got here and sensed no reason to connect with the Blues, and by extension rugby.
When it was apparent the locals had an uneasy relationship with the club and were seemingly going to
Eden Park under sufferance — it gave those new in town a distinct sense that it would be a serious social faux pas to turn up to an event wearing a replica Blues jersey.
To assimilate in Auckland these past two decades, it has been best to avoid the Blues. Look at playgrounds across the city — where most children turn up wearing a Barcelona shirt, most specifically that of Lionel Messi.
And that’s the power of winning right there — that kids 20,000km away in Auckland will happily, proudly, wear a replica jersey of a Spanish football club, but not that of their home rugby team.
Maybe that will all change now. Auckland kids needn’t scour the world to fill their wardrobe or worry what their friends might think if they declare their allegiance to the Blues.
Winning has removed the stigma, made it socially acceptable to be a Blues fan, and in a year or so, Auckland’s coolest kids could still be coming to school with a No 10 on their jersey, but that of Beauden Barrett rather than Messi.
One title may not be enough to deliver thousands of new players or fans. But it’s certainly a start, and if Auckland is going to become the rugby powerhouse it wants to be and NZR needs it to be, then it seems more likely to happen now than it has at any other time in the past 18 years.