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KEY POINTS:
The new Blues era hit a pregnant pause in Pretoria.
Their fans didn't have to look far to find the team which should rate as the Super 14 title favourite over the weekend, and unfortunately it is not the Auckland-based mob.
The Bulls of South Africa are the
most imposing team in this Super 14, now that the Crusaders are without Robbie Deans and Dan Carter.
The Bulls have lots of power, plenty of pace on the flanks and experience all over the park, and they also have halfback Fourie du Preez. The 2009 season is set up well for them.
It is a year in which the Bulls have the maximum seven regular home games, and those matches are conveniently arranged. The Bulls can ease into the season with four home games while their other three are grouped near the end. They should be well positioned going into the final four rounds, when they will be able to smash their way towards the top of the table, if they aren't already there. They are the team to beat.
As the Bulls - who were without Victor Matfield - showed yesterday, they will crush any team that doesn't fight them with the right mixture of brains and brawn. You can almost hear their thundering hooves from here, and the combative and clever du Preez sends opposition hearts jumping every time he gets the ball.
The Blues were lambs to this slaughter.
It is very hard to work out why coach Pat Lam put All Black prop Tony Woodcock on the bench in a team already severely weakened. This was tantamount to running up a white flag, and the Bulls accordingly charged to an unassailable 26-0 lead.
This was over-analytical modern selection tactics at their worst.
Woodcock, the tough frontrower, should have been the first bloke picked to play in this rugged cauldron - that's if you really set out to win.
Instead, Lam started rookie prop Tevita Mailau. He wasn't a disaster and the scrums looked okay, but there is no way in the world that Mailau could match Woodcock's contribution.
Lam's theory, from his reported comments, was that he wanted Woodcock fresh for the final assault. But there is no point in bringing on a matchwinner when the game has already been lost. The Blues needed to stay in the contest from the outset - which should have made Woodcock's start a mandatory one.
I'm also highly sceptical about the paternity leave being offered to the Blues players. Yes, players have duties at home. But they also have professional responsibilities.
Does the ordinary working Joe get the luxury of so much time off?
The Blues had three players on paternity leave - Joe Rokocoko, Jerome Kaino and Taniela Moa - for this match. Key All Blacks Rokocoko and Kaino were missing for their second game in a competition that is only 13 rounds long. It's not just the games, they have also missed building into the team cohesion at training.
It's all very well saying happy players make a more successful team. Putting out severely weakened teams who lose games does not a successful team make either. These Blues, with new coaches and new combinations, needed Rokocoko and Kaino to set standards for a new era.
But the problems go deeper than that. The Blues don't have a first five-eighth up to the mark. Jimmy Gopperth was poor in Pretoria and it is hard to see him getting much better. He failed to wield any influence or find holes with either his passing or running, and he made one horrible clanger.
Michael Hobbs looked a better prospect on his first touch when an inside pass pierced the Bulls' defence.
The Blues would have been far more competitive with Woodcock, Kaino, Rokocoko and Moa starting - and they all could have been there. It is within the context of the recent history of failed player welfare ideas in New Zealand rugby that this extended paternity leave is really irksome.
The good news from Pretoria was the terrific scampering of Rene Ranger, the strong and low-slung Northland wing who is a major prospect. He provided a reminder that this region should always be capable of finding exciting new talent.
Yet Woodcock's benching suggests the new Blues era just doesn't have enough old-fashioned desperation.
But wait, there is more.
A Sunday newspaper claimed the New Zealand Rugby Union is considering a Dan Carter-style sabbatical for Blues lock Ali Williams in which he could go overseas during most or all of the 2010 Super 14.
The difference between the Williams and Carter sabbaticals is that the big lock wouldn't play rugby during it. Instead, he'd flit around America, hobnobbing it with the corporate set and taking rugby to the world supposedly.
When I went to school, this sort of lark was not called a sabbatical. It was called a holiday, and it still should be.
The NZRU's manager of professional rugby, Neil Sorenson, reckoned: "He [Ali] is a guy who bashes himself about a bit and in the last two years he's had niggling injuries so we have to ask, how can we manage his career over the next few years? We are open to all options and we are very player-welfare focused."
Well Neil, that's what professional footballers do. They get bashed around more than a bit, and they get more than a few niggling injuries. Then they get up for some more.
If you want to check out how it's really done, see if an NRL club will let you into their dressing room one day.
And pray tell us how enabling Carter to play year-round rugby was in the interests of player welfare?
It's all a load of tosh, with officials making up excuses on the run in an effort to explain away their pandering to increasingly powerful players who can threaten to shift overseas if they don't get their own way. Or in other words, all the NZRU really cares about are the All Blacks while it only pays lip service to the thrills of the Super 14.
Actually, for the record, Ali wasn't bashing himself around too much in 2007 because he was on a rest and reconditioning programme in preparation for an arduous World Cup against the might of Scotland, Italy, Romania and Portugal.
It is this player welfare nonsense which scuppered the World Cup campaign.
There's so much player welfare going in the Blues they'll be lucky to get a team on the field soon. If Big Ali does go stateside, Blues fans will pray that Anthony Boric, Curtis Haiu and Co aren't due to get in the family way next season.
Ali Williams has only just returned to the Blues - and he hasn't even got on the field so far - yet there is already talk of him skiving around America next season. Are these people taking the Mickey?
And what's Ali going to do? Turn up at Times Square in a Spiderman suit yelling "No comment"?
The world hasn't gone mad. But the people who run rugby in this country have.
