There has been a constant theme at the Blues over the years. Team fails to meet expectations, a new coach is appointed, looks at the personnel and concludes that they should be playing the same instinctive, high-tempo thrills and spills rugby that their predecessor implemented.
But nowit would seem that a full stop has been placed on that as Vern Cotter has arrived and seen something entirely different within his playing group.
He has looked at the explosive muscularity of his athletes, assessed their raw power and decided that flamboyance is not the right path.
Cotter, known to one and all as “Stern Vern” has redefined the Blues as bruisers - tough, uncompromising players who know the value of confrontation and direct running.
The Blues of 2024 look nothing like the Blues of 2023 in terms of where they attack, how they attack and, maybe most importantly, how they defend.
There’s an assumption that this is because Cotter, a lifelong farmer who still has land in Te Puke, sees the game through a narrower lens - one that hasn’t been corrupted by overpriced lattes on Ponsonby Rd, endless obsessing about house prices and wildly distorted views about the quality of education offered by private schools.
But it does Cotter a massive disservice to roll out what is essentially a lazy stereotype that a farmer turned coach sees the game in one dimension, when he’s one of the best travelled in the business, having had charge of Clermont and Montpellier in France, as well as Scotland and Fiji, and as such, he is in possession of a depth of rugby intelligence.
The real reason, it would seem, that the Blues are playing a tighter, more combative style of rugby is because Cotter looked at the way they crumbled in the 2022 Super Rugby Pacific final when their lineout imploded, and then the way their physicality deserted them in the semifinals last year where they were belted 52-15 in Christchurch and has said, “never again”.
Hoskins Sotutu has emerged as a vital cog in the Blues machine. Photo / Photosport
He’s building a Blues team that can play finals football - one that has the capacity to use the likes of Hoskins Sotutu, Akira Ioane and Patrick Tuipulotu to smash their way up the middle of the field, patiently wearing teams down with their ball-carrying power, cleanout efficiency and ability to endlessly recycle quickly.
It’s a team now, with a scrum that looks capable of being destructive against all-comers and it’s a team, having only conceded two tries in their last three games, that is learning the art of weaponising defence.
Cotter is essentially turning the Blues, stylistically at least, from a Super Rugby team into an international team.
The Blues are playing lower-risk rugby, with the patience to break teams down first before they are willing to use the obvious pace and ball-handling finesse within their backline.
It’s a style of rugby that is not only enabling the Blues to build victories now but it is one that will set them up more effectively to also win later in the competition when the weather turns, and the quality of the opposition intensifies to limit space and opportunity.
With games against the Brumbies and Reds coming up, the next two weeks will provide a stiff test of how robust and adept the Blues team has become in the art of confrontational rugby.
But of course, the ultimate test it would seem, will come when they meet the Chiefs and Hurricanes, both of whom are also playing up-tempo, highly-skilled, abrasive rugby that is dynamic, unpredictable and fluid.
The Crusaders may have fallen from their perch as the competition’s most rugged and set-piece driven team, but in their place have come the Chiefs and Hurricanes, who are delivering their own highly combative styles that just like the Blues, look to be more in tune with the sort of rugby played in the international arena.
What’s making the competition exciting is that the Chiefs, Hurricanes and Blues are all empowering a young cohort of players to use their physicality to devastating effect.
There’s been plenty of highly-skilled rugby on view from the top sides – ample passages of slick and expansive football that is multi-faceted, but at its core as has been a toughness that maybe hasn’t always been at the core of Super Rugby.
Ideally, it would be good if Super Rugby still required the likes of Sotutu, Josh Lord, Tupou Vai’i, Samipeni Finau, Naitoa Ah Kuoi, Brayden Iose, Peter Lakai and Xavier Numia to front South African opposition, just to stress-test how well they are really tracking as potential All Blacks who can handle the cut and thrust of test matches.
But on the evidence produced so far, it seems fair to believe that the Blues have been rebuilt as a sturdier proposition, and they are heading for a showdown with the equally robust and well-equipped Chiefs and Hurricanes.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and has written several books about sport.
