All Blacks players are filtering in as the Blues gear up for a huge season under new coach Leon MacDonald
COMMENT
Optimism, it seems, is a hardy emotion in Auckland rugby circles, capable of sustaining itself in tundra-like conditions and blossoming on the tiniest nourishment.
Given the way things have panned out in the past decade for the Blues, it's a wonder anyone is still bothering to invest anything emotional or financial in the Super Rugby side.
But somehow an albeit dwindling group have found the mental strength to stick it out over the years and endure a sustained diet of failure and catastrophe.
They have seen enough bad to believe that if the past decade didn't break them, nothing will. But it would be a mistake to believe that, because this year could be the one where patience snaps — a year where failure or underperformance can't be tolerated and one where rugby loses whatever tenuous grip it has on New Zealand's largest city.
Rugby in Auckland is in crisis, and while one good season by the Blues can't fix it, one more bad season could plunge the game further into chaos.
The big problem for the Blues is that they have run out of peripheral factors to blame if it all goes wrong.
They have a new head coach, who despite never having been in charge of a Super Rugby team before, is universally considered a deep thinker and innovator.
They have had a boardroom clear-out which has brought in a couple of heavyweight operators with rugby and business acumen.
And with a few astute signings and retentions, some key players returning from injury and a good young crop emerging from the provincial ranks, the Blues, whether they realise it or not, have raised expectations in the past five months.
The Blues kick off their Super Rugby campaign at Eden Park tomorrow night and whether it's wishful thinking, blind hope or astute analysis of the new landscape, there will be several thousand souls there convinced they will see their team start with a victory against the reigning champion Crusaders and continue to take big scalps as the season plays out.
Ma'a Nonu and Blues coach Leon MacDonald. Photo / Photosport
Life is different now for the Blues. Since 2013, there hasn't been genuine optimism about their chances.
In the last six years they have been mostly awful but no one really had any right to expect anything else.
They have been able to bumble from one shambolic season to the next on the basis that there weren't too many fans expecting or believing they would see anything else.
They had dysfunctional governance on their board that prevented any sensible or logical decision-making and masterminded an inglorious coaching exit, John Kirwan, and a flawed coaching reappointment, Tana Umaga.
They had, in Auckland Rugby, an investor and so-called partner that hadn't worked out it had been cast in a support rather than leading role and continued to compete with the Blues for the region's best talent.
Internecine politics have been responsible for the Auckland region becoming the greatest provider of professional players for every team other than the Blues and had it not been for third party intervention, Rieko Ioane and Niko Jones could have been on that casualty list.
With the exception of Sonny Bill Williams, the Blues didn't sign a player of note between 2012 and 2018. Ma'a Nonu didn't come by choice in 2014 and every other player the Blues have targeted — Daniel Carter, Beauden Barrett, Aaron Cruden — has said no thanks.
They haven't had a test-class No10 for the better part of two decades, or for that matter, a game-directing halfback or ball-playing, bruising No8.
For the last 14 years, but six in particular, they have had big holes in an inexperienced squad, unproven coaches trying to find their way and an ineffective and divided board.
They have consistently failed but haven't necessarily underperformed and while there are still a surprising number of people willing to turn up at Eden Park perhaps for no other reason than it is something to do, many more fans have been lost in these wilderness years.
Rieko Ioane and Sonny Bill Williams. Photo / Photosport
It's not just fans who have walked away either. The number of school teams in Auckland has shrunk by 20 per cent in the same period and as the city's demographics continue to change, the more the sport will struggle to win hearts and minds of the wider populace.
There is now a generation who have no idea that the Blues were once Super Rugby's most feared predator and they assume the city has a professional team mostly because it feels it should, unlike Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin who have one because they are good at rugby.
There is another older generation who cling to the memory of being in packed terraces at Eden Park, swigging beer with a casual disregard for its ludicrous cost all to revel in the stereotype of being a grossly-entitled Aucklander while their All Black-laden team crushed whatever provincial hicks they were playing.
The nostalgia is so powerful because those who were there fear they lived through something that is unlikely to be seen again.
Without inspiration there is no aspiration and the grassroots needs a champion Blues team, or at least a Blues team that fosters some kind of desire in young Aucklanders to get out there and give rugby a go.
Blues head coach Leon MacDonald (L) and assistant coach Tana Umaga. Photo / Photosport
What makes this year so critical is not that they are operating with such a small base that they can ill-afford to see more fans walk away or more players head to basketball and rowing.
The real danger is that if the Blues don't improve this year, having supposedly fixed most or nearly all of what has been impeding them, when will they turn themselves around?
That question will become paramount and who knows how many long-sufferers might call it quits if they see all the same failings this year as they previously have.
The deeper thinkers might start to feel that the Blues will never be fixed — that they are an entirely lost cause and beyond salvation.
Whatever little pocket of hope they have kept alive in the last decade could be snuffed out as perennial disappointment is possible to live with indefinitely when you expect nothing but perennial disappoint-ment. The worst thing the Blues have done ahead of this campaign is raise the hopes of their last few supporters.
