The Blues are on the home stretch to their miserable season, with five matches of their next six at Eden Park, and coach John Kirwan admitting they have only pride and their supporters to play for now.
The latest defeat, a 29-15 reverse to the Crusaders in Christchurch on Saturday,was their ninth of the season. Their only success was against the Brumbies at Eden Park just over a fortnight ago.
There is no doubt that a draw which has seen them play only once at their fortress was been extremely detrimental, but as Kirwan admitted yesterday, they should still be in a better position than 14th of 15 teams.
"It's been a difficult year, we've been away the whole year practically," he said.
"We should be in a better position than we are so I'm not going to make excuses. It's good for us to get home and play in front of our people."
Kirwan's early-season defiance has been replaced by pragmatism. He sounds weary after the almost constant cycle of defeats, the latest to a fired-up Crusaders team under pressure themselves after consecutive losses.
"They came out as I knew they would," Kirwan said. "After being under pressure all week with pretty much an All Black squad, they came out hard and a couple of errors by us got them off to a great start. We came back well at 14-10, but just after halftime a pretty big error from us was pretty costly. It was groundhog day, really."
Their big error was the Josh Bekhuis hack at a loose ball which sent it directly to Tom Taylor, who gave it to human wrecking machine Nemani Nadolo and backed up to go over for the Crusaders' third try. Nadolo had also set up the first two tries.
Kirwan, who saw his team respond in the first half through a well-worked Francis Saili try and Brendon O'Connor after the break, said the Blues were "shattered" afterwards.
"We just talked about coming home, being home. It feels like we've been travelling all year. It's really nice to be home this week. We really need to make sure Eden Park is our fortress and play for our fans this week."
Loose forward Akira Ioane caused problems for the Crusaders' defence and in particular Richie McCaw - the 19-year-old's evasion of the All Black captain in the second half was one of the few positives for Kirwan's team.
Kirwan yesterday said Ioane was a target for the New Zealand Under-20 team this year which has the potential to limit his involvement for the rest of the Blues' season.
The Blues will face the Force, the only team in the competition with fewer points than them, next Saturday afternoon. A victory will be meaningless in the bigger scheme of things, but it will at least allow them to move into their final phase of the season with some pride intact. As Kirwan said, there's nothing else to play for now.
