SPORTRITE - Has over-analysis killed the Blues' joy

With Tim Eves
HAVING not had the pleasure of five-star hotel accommodation with meals provided on demand, a medical team to beckon and a troupe of tacticians plotting what you will do and when, it is hard to say just how difficult life as a rugby professional really is.
But from the confines of the couch, or conversely the damp stadium terraces with a lukewarm pie in one hand and a flat beer in the other, it looks a bit tiresome.
Actually, judging by the way the Blues have been playing lately, it looks downright boring.
Come to think of it, just how good is life as a professional sportsperson, and in particular, the daily grind of fitness one day, weights the next, lineouts in the morning, scrums in the afternoon then a team run one day and a meeting the next.
The game, you will note, has not got a mention yet.
Obviously, the detailed machinations of a professional sports team, and in particular the Blues, is not something available for public consumption. You have to keep some secrets, we suppose.
But as we (as in the proverbial we) brace ourselves for the battle between the Blues and the Crusaders tonight, it might be timely to ponder, or at least speculate, why the game in Christchurch this evening is a do or die event for the Blues.
This is a long way from the Blues team that was making hardened rugby folk weak at the knees and hearts all a-flutter in the early stages of the Super 14.
Even the women were getting excited.
Back then, in the good ol' days of late February, the Blues were carving up merry hell. There is nothing more contagious than the sight of a gaggle of giggling Polynesian rugby players scoring tries with deft little passes and damaging rib cages with brutal front-on tackles.
Play-offs were a certainty - put the house on it, mate. The Blues were unbackable favourites week after week.
Then someone must have asked the players to watch themselves on video and try and explain why player A stepped off his left and passed to his right and caused player B to score a try.
The computer printout would have told each player how many metres they ran, how many tackles they attempted and how many times they dove headlong into that tangled mass of heaving limbs otherwise known as a ruck.
They would then wander down to the gym, weigh-in and be told how many chicken burgers they could eat and when, so long as they peeled the skin off and washed it down with a protein shake and chilled distilled water.
You have to ask: Has analysis has killed the spirit in the Blues?
This may be another crass generalisation, but from memory the best rugby players at school were the ones who paid no attention in maths, scored well in English essays by bullying the teacher's pet into writing it for them and scored the best looking chicks at the school ball because they scored several tries for the 1st XV.
These players then graduated to various representative teams and ended up at the Blues.
Now either these players are over-rated rugby playboys whose limited talent for the sport has finally been exposed, or they are a collection of rugby individuals so bored by endless video replays and tactical analysis seminars that they have lost the joy of playing the game.
There's probably a couple more options to consider, but not enough print space to discuss them.
Getting paid to play the game might have a few unavoidably tiresome contractual obligations attached, but the moment the players look tired of playing a game, something truly horrible has happened.