Most will put it down to the Crusaders' notorious slow starting and will recount Blackadder's many qualities. For some time now, he has looked a man who understands that in rugby, like war, you put body on the line with your colleagues and learn about being in extremis, depending on your mates, respect, the value of teamwork and a whole host of other factors which mean the difference between winning and losing - and which submerge differences like religion, social status, education, skin colour, politics and such.
He has a deep understanding of the game; the nous and mana, the epitome of a potential All Blacks coach. He is a former All Blacks captain, a genuine and intelligent man who earns respect and speaks sensibly and wisely. He has never failed to take the Crusaders at least to the semifinals since taking over in 2009 - they lost the final to the Reds in 2011 and to the Waratahs last year. But he has never won the Super Rugby title.
The main functions of a rugby coach are, broadly speaking, strategy, selection, management and execution - pick the type of game you want your team to play, select the right individuals to play it, manage player welfare, decide on tactics for the opposition of the week and ensure your players have the gameplan set in their heads and the skills to execute it (and the presence of mind to change the plan if it isn't working).
Easy, huh? Well, no. But what intrigues about the Crusaders and Blackadder is not so much that they are poor starters - it is that they are consistently poor starters.
In 2013, they lost the first two matches and came back to make the semifinals, losing only to the champion Chiefs. Last year, they also lost the first two games but made the final.
Why are they such perennially lousy starters? This must be a coaching job. OK, better to spark at the end of the season rather than burning out after the beginning - something Kirwan's Blues discovered. But how might the last two seasons have turned out had the Crusaders won those first two matches?
Their limp early form seems ingrained, insurmountable. The Rebels are an improved side, sure, but that is not the full answer. The Crusaders lost 35-12 in their last warm-up match against the Reds. Most of us, knowing such games are no real guide, waited for a backlash that never came.
Certainly Blackadder thought it was on the way. In a pre-match interview, he joked about the "jinx" of similar interviews ahead of similar games in past years, only to see it gallingly repeated on Friday night. The Crusaders were outdone at the breakdown, made repeated handling errors, and their accuracy and creativity was poor. They ended with yet another injury to Dan Carter.
Far worse to be saying all that halfway through the season, sure, but as someone once said: the chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken - and the Crusaders have developed a bad habit indeed. Try starting a World Cup like that.
