They botched key lineouts and – with All Blacks great Beauden Barrett having possibly his worst game forthe Blues by some distance (and a limp showing from many senior players) – there were lost breakdowns, defensive lapses and a mortifying inability to beat a team with only 13 men for about 20 minutes: it was pretty much a perfect storm.
They also failed to heed the lessons of 2019. That was the last time the Blues lost to the Highlanders in Dunedin (24-12). On that day, they butchered three lineout drives from kickable penalties, exceeded last weekend when they flubbed four. In that 2019 side were: Patrick Tuipulotu, Dalton Papali’i, Rieko Ioane, Caleb Clarke, Ofa Tu’ungafasi and Harry Plummer. Rugby players talk a lot about “learnings” these days. Maybe they need to heed lessons instead – that one was ignored.
Last weekend, the Blues turned down five kickable penalties, choosing instead to kick for the corner. They scored one try from them – to hooker Ricky Riccitelli. That’s a 20% return. Worse, there was a whiff of complacency, almost arrogance, about it.
The Highlanders were emotionally charged after their rousing send-off to former teammate Connor Garden-Bachop, who died last year. Their defence was passionate and effective. They kept cool game-management heads, growing in confidence as the Blues found new ways to bungle everything, calling to mind some of the worst of the pre-2024, pre-Vern Cotter years, full of frustration and inaccuracy.
Hoskins Sotutu in action against the Highlanders. Photo / Photosport
Gone was the Blues’ championship-winning, forwards-based, no-nonsense driving play, replaced by some aimless passing and kicking. All the talk before round one, from Cotter and players, was that the Blues had to forget last season; they needed to look forward, not back. On the evidence of two matches so far, they badly need to look back to remember what they were.
Consistent data on scoring tries from lineouts in the 22 after opting to kick for touch instead of goal are still hard to come by. However, stats from the 2019 World Cup showed that such tactics yielded tries only about 40% of the time, an average of only two successes in five attempts.
Tuipulotu, the skipper, was good last year at taking the points, still a key part of rugby. The four failed attempts from lineouts as the Blues chased the game went like this:
Timoci Tavatavanawai turnover; ball lost.
Blues win lineout, force an even more kickable penalty.
They kick for touch again but this time Highlanders lock Fabian Holland pinches the throw.
Lineout again from a kickable penalty 12m out – but the Blues’ Josh Beehre loses the ball – and hooker Jack Taylor produces a freakish clearing kick, travelling some 70m, deflating the Blues.
Maybe it was the failure of their kicking from hand that led to the Blues ignoring kicks at goal, with Barrett the worst offender. Time and again, he hoofed the ball up the middle of the park where the Highlanders turned it into profit, particularly in the second half.
Two of his kicks led directly to Highlanders fullback Finn Hurley’s two tries. The Blues’ contestable kicks generally weren’t, while the Highlanders’ nearly always were. Barrett scored a good try early on after a Blues raid but, later in the game, when he tried belatedly to run at the defence, he laid an egg there too. Caleb Tangitau stripped him of the ball for another Highlanders’ gain – Tangitau had earlier made a break to turn a Barrett kick into a Hurley try.
It’s not unusual for All Blacks to be a bit muted, a bit off the pace, at this time of year. But Barrett, Tuipulotu, Papali’i, Finlay Christie (a staunch defender embarrassed twice defensively by Hurley), Rieko Ioane and an especially quiet and ineffective Mark Tele’a were a little more than that.
The Highlanders also had Tavatavanawai in inspiring form, burgling turnovers to frustrate the Blues and revealing something none of us knew he had – a kicking game. One massive effort earned a 50/22 and a vital penalty goal, which they tellingly kicked instead of opting for a lineout. Any one or maybe two of the Blues’ spurned kicks at goal could have changed the flow of the game, ratcheting up pressure on the Highlanders.
There are divergent views on the trend towards scoring maul tries from attacking lineouts. In the 2015 World Cup, Japan skipper Michael Leitch opted for one against South Africa, pulling off the greatest upset in World Cup history. At the same tournament, England opted for a lineout instead of a penalty that would have led to extra time against Wales, suffering an ignominious exit.
Tries from lineouts and rolling mauls are a legitimate weapon even if they bore the pants off most of us. However, they don’t always work and the art of balancing punt with points is no simple art.
The Blues will need to be a lot better against the Hurricanes this week and maybe embrace the fact that sometimes teams can benefit from maximising marginal gains rather than being marginal at maximum gains.
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Paul Lewis has been a journalist since the last ice age. Sport has been a lifetime pleasure and part of a professional career during which he has written four books, and covered Rugby World Cups, America’s Cups, Olympic & Commonwealth Games and more.
