Chris Rattue: Crusaders' Trojan horse is in town

While North Harbour were touching historical wood and wishing themselves good luck, even the wise and the wary would have been happy to let the enfants terrible of rugby have their evening in the sun and a long night at the bar.

After years of heartbreak, bad breaks and self-inflicted breakdowns, the union that was founded on the wildly contrasting genius of two players - Buck Shelford and Frano Botica - had claimed its greatest prize with a method that was only a faint legacy from those two.

Neither would have allowed a Canterbury team struggling for cohesion to so easily dominate possession and territory, although you didn't need to close the eyes to see Botica magic in the way North Harbour conjured its Ranfurly Shield-winning try.

When the hangovers have worn off though, North Harbour's position in the rugby scheme of things will remain as it did before they rode their courage and good luck and Canterbury's poor form to claim a trophy that will no more shield them from the professional realities than Jonah Lomu will lead them to the promised land.

There were 50 fans to greet Harbour at the airport on Sunday night, which an enthusiastic Taranaki supporter told me was a good few thousand less than the number which welcomed Andy Slater and co in New Plymouth when they won the shield 10 years ago.

"That's not a proper union," the Taranaki-ite chortled.

The last time rugby inspired a decent street parade in this neck of the woods, I had to inform him, was during the 1981 Springbok tour.

That's just the way it is up here, although in more romantic sporting times the shield would surely have drawn more than a Harbour handful at the arrival gates.

Sport and politics is also swirling in the Ranfurly Shield mix.

Chief among the ironies mixed up with the celebrations - and by all accounts there was not much time between drinks for once in Harbour history - was coach Allan Pollock's claim the shield provided the country a chance to discover that North Harbour is not a suburb of Auckland.

Not that the rest of the country really cares about these distinctions or is suddenly going to see the Harbour Bridge as anything other than a wisp of milk between the flat whites of Ponsonby Rd and Takapuna.

The "rest of the country" as it is known has a picture of Greater Auckland embedded in its psyche that obliterates the region's endearing strengths and enduring problems and pours its imaginings into flash-Harry cups of coffee that the rest of them drink anyway. You won't change that imagery or antipathy overnight, or over thousands of nights.

Pollock's running of a black and maroon flag up the pole, however, contained the irony that there is one obvious area in which Auckland and North Harbour are most famously and officially united. It's called rugby.

The professional era gave us the Blues and eventually it gave the Blues the combination of Auckland and North Harbour. The Chiefs and Waikato breathed a sigh of relief and the Blues have never been the same since.

A renowned former player of the highest credentials with strong links to a number of northern unions although not Auckland told me once: "The worst thing Auckland ever did was let North Harbour get strong."

This was not an attack on North Harbour as such but simply a dispassionate analysis of how and how not to put together a professional side such as the Blues. It is an analysis that stands tall and it has to be said that the rise of Bay of Plenty has done absolutely nothing to rescue the Chiefs, who seem to get away with years of substandard performances the way the Blues do not. The new Chiefs, you can rest assured, will be built around a resurgent Waikato.

Two into one (sorry Northland) has never worked for the Blues, who were at their finest when based on the power of a great Auckland side.

We are travelling a well-worn path here but the most successful teams in the Super 12/14 are those - namely Canterbury and the Brumbies - which don't have competing player and political interests bubbling underneath.

A leading rugby official in this region once claimed in confidence that the only area of substantial communication between Auckland and North Harbour was in refereeing. It's fair to say that referees, who cop it from all sides, can get a circle of wagons together as quickly as anyone, even though battling egos stir within. Their bonds are even strong enough to cross this particular bridge.

In other areas though, we are talking about a great divide in the biggest franchise in the country's national sport. Little wonder the Blues fall over year after year, that David Nucifora did not even have a natural leader to turn to as he sought a captain for the flailing giant last season.

While North Harbour celebrated the shield victory, those who have invested in the new rugby world - namely the Super 14 - would have felt a few nervous twitches.

The future of domestic rugby, under the present set-up, is in the Super 14, not the Air New Zealand Cup. The national provincial championship is struggling for crowds and viewers, primarily because the great players are missing from the action and always will be. This is a great shame, to many of us, but also a necessity if the New Zealand Rugby Union is to fill its coffers with News money and keep the top players happy, here.

As the scenes from Jade Stadium showed, it is the Richie McCaws and Dan Carters of this world who draw the crowds, not a lump of wood. What might fire rugby in the north is not the Ranfurly Shield but a star-studded Blues winning the title and setting up a dynasty instead of a disaster.

Yet the Blues, as Nucifora has undoubtedly found, are a jumble of old rugby world sensibilities and necessities that clash with what has become the tried and trusted method of running a professional sports outfit.

Winning the shield will only embolden North Harbour, as is their right, and raise the rivalry with Auckland. It will only add to the chaos which has turned the rugby riches of the region into a professional pauper.

The answer, long term, is to give the booming North Harbour region its own Super 14 franchise. If the Highlanders stick to their word and court disaster by only picking from their own, maybe North Harbour will have a hope in this area - but it remains a longshot.

A Harbour franchise would, in turn, allow the Blues to return to an Auckland-based side that should include the far reaches of South Auckland.

Counties Manukau are as much in the abyss as ever since joining the Chiefs and, just to confuse matters, they've now crept into Auckland by finding a new home in Penrose.

But for now, the Blues remain built on rocky foundations only obscured, briefly, by traditional early season optimism. They also recruit haphazardly, miss gems that are sitting on their doorstep and lose players who prosper elsewhere.

Take the present situation. As Nucifora - from the dour rugby land of Queensland and the meticulous phase-counting metropolis of Canberra - tries to impose his will on the Blues, Auckland and North Harbour are indulging in the thrills-and-spills rugby that perfectly suits the make-up of their squads.

There is no obvious line of thinking that runs through the provincial sides into the Blues right now. Auckland have been fantastic to watch at times this year, a tribute to the players' skills and the innovative coaching of Pat Lam and Shane Howarth.

It's less likely that Nucifora would be dancing in the aisle though. He's the man who has got to put this jigsaw together and he might shake his head at Auckland's wobbly lineout and the way Harbour attacked a below-strength Canterbury by giving away the ball.

Canterbury lost the shield and yet you could still see more method in their ways than in those of the victors. For the moment, and with new players in the mix, it's a case of Canterbury's cohesion and timing being off.

Make no mistake though. There is a regimented plan in those parts and you can even start to see it emerging the way Tasman are playing. They are reading off the same page.

If the Blues remain the most logical and likely challenger to the Crusaders' crown, sending the shield north might actually be good for the red and blacks on the theory that while the Blues remain divided, the Crusaders will rule.

The Blues are touching wood all right and it's a Crusaders' Trojan horse.