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General Rugby Discussion
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The Blues are in danger of looking like the Dick Rowes of New Zealand rugby.
Rowe was the London record company man who turned down a chance to sign the Beatles, telling their manager "guitar bands are on the way out."
A shining star, Malakai Fekitoa, the Highlanders and All Blacks centre, was in the grasp of the Blues and they let him get away.
It seems incredible that the Blues can't attain better results when the franchise is based in a city that produces what sometimes feels like the playing backbone of not only rugby in this country but also the NRL in Australia.
Fekitoa wasn't one who slipped through the talent net. He was spotted at Wesley College, became part of the Auckland rugby academy, worked like a Trojan, and stepped into the Auckland side of 2012 so successfully he played in every NPC game.
It wasn't as if his brilliant attacking abilities were hard to detect. In 2013 the Auckland sevens side won the national title and Fekitoa was the star, taking away the player of the tournament award.
His provincial coaches raved and in 2013 he was in the first Blues squad named by John Kirwan.
That's when the ladder to the stars was pulled out from under him.
He was considered so surplus to requirements he didn't have one minute of match-play during the whole 16 games the Blues played. It was always unlikely he would start, with Rene Ranger the regular centre, but why did he not get at least a little time off the bench?
There were no major behaviour issues behind the scenes. No problem with his work ethic. Fekitoa was known to be a fierce trainer.
It was simply believed by Kirwan and his coaching team that Fekitoa didn't have the ability to make the step from NPC to Super Rugby.
Little wonder that when the Highlanders wanted to sign him the Blues didn't fight to keep him.
The rest, as they say, is history. Given regular starts in Dunedin he showed how easily he could actually make the transition and Highlanders' coach Jamie Joseph's faith in him was soon echoed by Steve Hansen.
Fekitoa stands out as a major selection blunder but, with 20/20 hindsight, the loss of coach Joe Schmidt back in 2007 may ultimately feel even more costly.
To be fair to Dick Rowe and the '07 Blues management, if you've ever heard the Beatles' audition tape it's plodding and amateurish, and likewise Schmidt's time at the Blues had few hints of the coaching glory to come.
Right now Schmidt's the hottest coach in northern hemisphere rugby. In one season he took Ireland to a Six Nations title. At least one former All Blacks coach now believes Ireland, not England or South Africa, may be the biggest hurdle for the All Blacks at the World Cup this year.
But when Schmidt left Auckland in '07 to join his old Bay of Plenty coaching partner Vern Cotter at Clermont in France, there wasn't a tear shed. It was Schmidt's great misfortune that the fresh-faced, personable, former Tauranga schoolteacher, who does self-deprecation so well he may be the least ego-driven coach in the game, came to Auckland to be backline coach at the Blues in 2005, at a time when the career of first-five Carlos Spencer was winding down.
Schmidt wasn't the only person who recognised the fact, just the unlucky one who had to do something about it.
In the process he was vilified. In 2006 one excitable columnist wrote, "Time is up, Joe, because the backline has been a disaster since you came to town. The Blues' bottom line is so bad the time has come for someone to pay. Now."
It would have taken a stroke of genius to see how worthwhile persisting with Schmidt might have been. But sadly for the Blues, strokes of genius like Jamie Joseph seizing on Fekitoa, or the Chiefs putting Dave Rennie and Wayne Smith together, rarely seem to strike in Auckland.
Column from Phil Gifford. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to work out the implicated journalist, for fun let's call him a village idiot
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Anyone hear the freudian slip by Daire O'Brien on Against the Head?
"Relaxing after a game for the lads is just 2 bags of coke"
He meant bottles of coke and a bag of crisps. Shane Jenning's face was hillarious.
http://balls.ie/rugby/241508-daire-obrien-slip-rte/0 -
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Fair play to Rolland this was quite funny http://balls.ie/rugby/gif-former-referee-alain-rolland-scored-sneaky-try-ireland-saturday/
Typical home town ref.
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![[Deleted User]](/applications/dashboard/design/images/defaulticon.png)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N38BQbm_ejE
This discussion has been closed.
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