And the fact that the Blues have seemingly wound the clock back to the glory days of 1996 and yet are a relative ghost – unseen and unheard in the media - says everything about the respective abilities of Super Rugby and the NRL to engage fans, drive a narrative and generate a following.
All credit to the Warriors who are languishing in 10th, have never won a title and yet they continue to punch above their weight in terms of media coverage and drive the illusion of being a club dripping in success such is their celebrity following.
The clever part of their marketing is that they make fans want to be proud of the association – to buy the jerseys, to go to the games, to end conversations with “Up the Wahs”, and to believe that this will be their year.
It’s clever, because the Warriors have not enjoyed much success on the field over the years, and because league despite its enormous footprint in Australia, has not grabbed New Zealand in the same way.
The statistics – be it attendance, viewership or playing numbers – continue to show that rugby is New Zealand’s preferred football code, and yet the Warriors are stealing the show while they languish outside the playoff zone.
For the Blues, their continued inability to win the same media love must be both perplexing and heartbreaking.
In the last four years, they have systematically tackled the legacy issues that were preventing the club from succeeding.
They began in 2020 an orchestrated campaign to re-engage with Auckland schools and win back hearts and minds to make the Blues the aspirational club for teenagers across the city.
The degree to which it has worked is hard to measure, but the bad old days of the Blues, and sometimes rugby itself, missing out on contracting local talent have ended.
The Blues don’t keep every Auckland teenager, but they do at least now keep all the ones they want – and this also speaks to the improvements the club has made in its talent identification.
Not only do they have a better flow of junior talent into the club, but so too are they now retaining established players for longer and the likes of the Ioane brothers – Rieko and Akira – Patrick Tuipulotu, Ofa Tuungafasi and Dalton Papali’i, are all likely going to be lifelong Blues players, while it wouldn’t be a surprise if Caleb Clarke, Mark Tele’a and Harry Plummer also become local lads who never wanted to play for any other club.
The Blues have also been able to attract top talent from other clubs – most notably Beauden Barrett, who may end his career having won more titles in Auckland than he did with the Hurricanes.
The Blues have also built a strong identity around their multicultural personnel and been better at getting players out in the community.
This is a club that for almost two decades after winning the title in 2003 could barely get anything right, but one which has worked methodically since 2020 to fix itself, and the results can be seen in the performances which have enabled the Blues to win the Trans-Tasman title in 2021, make the Super Rugby Pacific final in 2022, semifinal in 2023 and who knows, maybe go the whole hog this year.
The shame for the Blues is that they have barely put a foot wrong and are in the midst of their most compelling campaign in 21 years, but no one seemingly cares or wants to make a fuss about it.
What the Blues need is what the Warriors have – the high-functioning machinery of the NRL behind them.
They need Super Rugby to look closely at the NRL and work out how it magically helps a club like the Warriors in the art of generating hype when there may not be much to hype.
How does a club with so little pedigree persuade Hollywood heavyweight Jack Black to wear a Warriors jersey and for so many middle-class Aucklanders brought up playing and watching rugby, turn down a ticket to the Blues but pay over the odds to go to Mount Smart.
These are questions that the Blues need Super Rugby Pacific to answer because really, they should be the hottest ticket town right now and the story driving the media agenda, because, unlike the Warriors, they are winning every week.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and has written several books about sport.
