KEY POINTS:
If ever a big man needed a big game to fan the faintly flickering embers of an All Black career it was Sione Lauaki. He delivered too, in his strongest match of the season by some margin, but it wasn't enough to get the Chiefs over the line against their hated rivals.
The west Aucklander, who last represented his country in the final test of the 2005 Grand Slam tour, can have only the most tenuous toehold in selection consideration. While the focus has been on the 22 'reconditioned' All Blacks, Graham Henry will have had half an eye on Lauaki's rehabilitation.
After a season again blighted by injury, the Lauaki machine spluttered into life at Waikato Stadium, fuelling the small hope that he could yet become the joker in Henry's pack.
Lauaki fits the Henry mould. He's huge - 1.92m and 119kg - athletic, came out of Kelston Boys' rugby factory and has decent ball skills, even if he can be frivolous with possession.
But his conditioning is prone to slip faster than others when without the necessary match time. A broken wrist in a pre-season match against last night's opposition meant he came into this pivotal campaign cold.
That hurt Ian Foster, who needed Lauaki's dynamic abilities to complement a pack of largely honest grafters, Liam Messam excepted. But it has hurt Lauaki more.
He has looked dreadfully off the pace. Last week against the Reds he was abject even by that gruesome match's standards.
Lauaki needs to be playing and playing well if he has any chance of jumping on the iron bird to France.
Lauaki offers little aside from his on-field abilities. Unlike players such as Anton Oliver, Conrad Smith and Reuben Thorne, he will not come under consideration for what he can offer off the pitch which has been problematic for him at times.
Lauaki is not known to fit particularly easily into a team situation - going further there has always been a suggestion there's a bit of "me-first" about the 25-year-old.
So the only way Lauaki will be able to convince Henry and his fellow selectors he is a luxury worth considering is if he strings together a series of blockbusting performances from now to the end of the season.
What better platform to launch his bid than against the team that rejected him in a keenly anticipated State Highway 1 derby.
He likes playing the Blues, as do most of the Chiefs, and few of that franchise's fans will forget his stunning try on the siren to beat the Blues in 2004.
It was from a towering Lauaki take in the lineout (the one bright spot in what was an otherwise embarrassing lineout display by the home side) that the Chiefs scored their opening try in what was their most coherent passage of rugby of the season. They mauled superbly into the Blues' 22, picked one-off twice, spun it right, drove once more, before spreading it left for Tasesa Lavea to score. It was simple, classic, brutally effective rugby.
Shortly after Isa Nacewa got a first-hand experience of what a powerful beast Lauaki can be in open play. Finding himself in a one-on-one with Lauaki, Nacewa was no doubt trying to second-guess which way Lauaki would sidestep.
Instead he was met with an old-fashioned front step that left him sprawling on the excellent surface.
The only blot on his first half display was an ill-directed charge off the back of the scrum on the last play of the half with the Chiefs threatening the Blues line.
Lauaki started the second half really hungry - stealing one at a ruck and cleverly slipping a pass that could have resulted in a try had it not been harshly adjudicated to have gone forward.
When Messam joined the fray Lauaki moved to the side of the scrum and continued to be heavily involved in all the Chiefs' futile attempts to break down the Blue Wall.
The Chiefs are getting better but unfortunately for their season, it is almost certainly too little, too late.
The same could probably be said of Lauaki's World Cup chances.
