George Moala of the Blues looks on. Photo / www.photosport.nz
George Moala of the Blues looks on. Photo / www.photosport.nz
Auckland, all that it is from grass-roots, schools, Mitre 10 Cup and the Blues, might actually be broken beyond repair in a rugby sense.
It might have to resign itself to being nothing more than a breeding ground for everyone else: a place where raw talent emerges with the expectation it will be contracted and refined somewhere else, be it in rugby, the NRL, AFL or even the NFL.
What else to think when the pattern is so ingrained. Auckland haven't been provincial champions since 2007. The Blues last won a Super Rugby title in 2003 and yet across the country there are Auckland-developed players who are critical and valued contributors.
Neither Auckland nor the Blues have been able to transform a phenomenal individual talent pool into a functioning collective.
The problem has existed for more than a decade, and not for want of trying, is proving to be unfixable.
Leni Apisai of the Blues walks off the field with the team after the defeat. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
That thought appeared to be one Blues coach Tana Umaga was trying to keep at bay on Friday night after watching his side lose their 13th straight game against a fellow New Zealand team.
Since coming to the club in 2016 he has remained remarkably sanguine, knowing as he did before he took the job, that he faced a character-testing time rebuilding a side from scratch.
Umaga has been patient, realistic in his expectations and quite definitely the best coach the club has had since the halcyon days when Graham Henry was in charge.
The Blues have evolved in his tenure: they are more structured, more disciplined, more potent and more connected as a group. They are a better side now than they were in 2015.
Matt Duffie of the Blues looks on after the defeat. Super Rugby match, Blues v Chiefs at Eden Park, Auckland, New Zealand. Photo /photosport.nz
But while they have improved, they have mot improved enough and the realisation is beginning to dawn that they may have hit their ceiling: that it may in fact be an almost impossible task for Umaga to get any more out of this Blues team.
He's taken them from bottom of the table to mid-table, but might that be as far as the journey goes?
It's early in the season to be so gloomy, and also with both Rieko and Akira Ioane in promising form, it seems ill-advised to condemn the Blues to be without hope.
But the concern is not that the Blues lack for talent or game breakers. They have, unlike previous Blues regimes, managed to select mostly the right group and it is one with an array of skills and genuine attributes.
The fundamental issue restricting their growth is their inability to make good decisions and this is not a problem that has suddenly arisen in the first two games of 2018.
A failure to be ruthless and clinical – particularly in the final quarter – hampered the Blues for much of last season.
They get it right some of the time, but not all of the time, and those lapses, those casual moments such as Melani Nanai flinging the ball to no one as he did on Friday night which led to a Chiefs' runaway try, are proving to be endemic.
Against the Chiefs, just as they did the week before in Dunedin, the Blues imploded mid-way through the second half. They made supremely basic mistakes both in their option-taking and execution which, in both games, saw them concede 14 points in five minutes.
What will have hurt Umaga the most about this weekend, though, was that his side couldn't find the killer instinct against a team that was initially selected with 15 players unavailable due to injury, before losing another two before kickoff.
The Chiefs were vulnerable and yet they stiffened their resolve and won the big moments and as Umaga fronted after the game, it was clear that his patience had been tested, that his frustration is rising and that he must be wondering what it will take to instil in his players the right sort of mentality required to regularly win the toughest games.
"We are disappointed there is no doubt about it," he said. "That was an opportunity for us. We had enough opportunities to win but we just didn't take them. That is something that we need to look at.
"Guys need to start really putting their hands up. As you saw, there were a lot of Chiefs players who put their hands up.
George Moala of the Blues looks on. Photo / www.photosport.nz
"We have got to find what it really means to us to play this game as the Blues. That is something we have been working hard on. You saw bits of it last week and bits of it in the first and second half. Again it is just that ability to put it all together."
There was a weariness to the way Umaga spoke – a near apologetic tone that was mixed with dismay that there he was again pin-pointing the same old problem as the reason his team had lost.
There may also have been, for the first time in his tenure, a hint of distress that he could see a future where the narrative doesn't change and that he may, despite the progress made and the endless hours of hard work, have weeks, possibly months, of this repeat failing to endure.
Anti-Auckland sentiment is alive and well and so no doubt another poor season from the Blues will be cheered to the rafters in the provinces.
But those who relish the demise of the Blues should be careful, for it remains the hand that feeds them.
New Zealand Rugby chief executive Steve Tew was at pains to stress in revealing record revenue and profit during the week, that Auckland is the gateway to all funding.
If the Blues succeed, New Zealand is in a stronger place economically: has a better story to sell to sponsors and broadcasters. As Tew said about crowd numbers: "The total number, frankly, is always driven by what happens in this town. You get decent crowds at Eden Park that will boost the numbers."
If the likes of the Crusaders and Chiefs want to continue to have the funds to poach the best young talent from Auckland, they need the country's largest city to generate the income that is then dispersed.
A stronger Auckland – and all that it entails – means more money for New Zealand so everyone should hope that the Blues, who have left for a two-week tour of South Africa, come home with two wins and proof they can consistently make good decisions.
