Take a chill pill NZR and let Piutau play

Head coach John Kirwan looks on as Charles Piutau of the Blues speaks to the media during an Auckland Blues Super Rugby training session at Unitec Field. Photo / Getty Images.

Hey you, New Zealand Rugby.

Relax brothers. Take a chill pill. We're all fine without you. Take a day off from ruling the world.

Rugby: Blues shot down over plans to play Piutau

Dear Tewie - Steve Tew. If you can solve global warming, poverty, pollution then get involved by all means. But when it comes to other people's lives, give yourselves a break and get your sticky beaks out of it.

Fresh from "offering" to mediate on the Blues board crisis the NZR has blocked the franchise playing Charles Piutau in the first 11 rounds of Super Rugby next year before he joins Ulster.

NZR have their noses out of joint, because Piutau is doing an OE before they were ready to let him do an OE. Oh you naughty boy, acting all independent like before achieving official Chosen One status.

This is the very same rugby union which took 20-odd top players out of half the Super competition in 2007. This is the same rugby union which has been happy to watch one of its golden boys, Dan Carter, jog the first half of this Super season. This is the same rugby union which actually takes All Blacks out of two Super Rugby rounds.

The Blues don't belong to us, the people of Northland, Auckland and Counties Manukau. We're appendages with wallets. No, as oft stated here, the Blues and other team are branch offices of the NZR.

It's time for a revolution (fat chance). The Blues should tell head office to get the hell of their patch. How many of them have ever lived here?

Here are a few suggestions for HQ. Have mufti days, try a vegetarian restaurant, go to a music festival, ride a bike to work, read a book, take a trip, watch a game from the worst seats, line up to buy a pie, get some people who aren't carbon copies of you on the board...do anything to get your heads out of that obsessive state of having to run everything. What you do is not normal. It's nutty. Maybe some of you need to move on.

Why did the divided Blues allow the NZR to mediate its coaching crisis? Here's why - rugby has become a nanny state which can't think for itself. The Blues board went running to daddy. If the Blues board can't sort something like that out, they shouldn't be the Blues board.

The World Cup obsession has encouraged this. The more the All Blacks failed, the more the pressure went on, the more administrators tried to control things. Ripping the All Black squad out of Super Rugby in 2007 was the beginning of the end. It took a while, but they saw 8 - 7 against France as 100 - 0 in favour of their methods. But it doesn't work.

Because rugby has become an often boring game administered by boring people watched by bored people. There is virtually no tribalism and beware NZR - there are a lot of far more interesting alternatives on TV. The last time I went to Eden Park, it was like a cemetery with hot chips. Rugby needs to breathe again.