Debunking the lead theory on what’s wrong with the Blues: Gregor Paul

All Blacks flanker Dalton Papali’i reacts following the Blues' defeat to the Chiefs. Photo / Photosport

THREE KEY FACTS

• The Blues are struggling in 2025, with only one victory for the Super Rugby Pacific champions.
• Back-to-back defeats to the Brumbies and Chiefs have both been by one point.
• There were long periods against the Chiefs in which the Blues controlled possession and territory.

The Blues floundering close to the bottom of the Super Rugby Pacific table was once a familiar story, but it is one that few were imagining would be retold in 2025 five weeks after the defending champions set out to retain their title.

The champions have seemingly lost their way, unable to get the requisite horsepower out of their smash-and-bash approach that proved so effective last year and in delivering just the one victory to date, conversations around the water cooler are back to the all-too-familiar topic of what has gone wrong at the Blues.

The lead theory is that the Blues haven’t tinkered enough with the simple tactical blueprint that was so successful for them last year.

Vern Cotter arrived as head coach, saw the power base contained within the athletes and reimagined the Blues as a team that would play almost exclusively on that strength.

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The rugby of 2024 was direct, mostly narrow and relied on relentless, dynamic ball carries at one concentrated point in the opposition defence.

It was massively effective, but so too was it somewhat alien to a side that had previously seen themselves as the tournament’s great entertainers, having built their initial period of success in the mid-1990s on a brand of expansive, high-risk, high-skilled rugby.

But Cotter’s vision seemingly also induced an undercurrent of discontent within the wider rugby fraternity.

There was a thinly veiled resentment that such a simple, brutal style of rugby was proving so effective in a competition that had always prided itself on selling a vision of the Southern Hemisphere as the champions of pass-and-catch.

It felt like the Blues were being branded as “new money” – rich but vulgar in a world that values how, rather than how much, wealth is accumulated.

And now that the Blues are struggling to bludgeon teams to bits, the questions are coming about whether the problem is a failure to adapt and evolve the game plan.

Are the Blues guilty of rugby’s supposed worst crime of standing still strategically and rolling out a repeat blueprint that most opponents now know how to defend and counter?

Given that many analysts and commentators never particularly loved the Blues’ power template last year, it’s inevitable that their current struggles will induce an element of schadenfreude – a kind of smug “told you so” narrative that the simplicity of their game plan was only ever going to be a short-term strength but a long-term weakness.

But the more nuanced conclusion to reach about the Blues is that their problem in 2025 has been a lack of accuracy and dynamism, rather than a lack of adaptation.

The common denominator with successful teams is an ability to be precise. When Ireland pulled the All Blacks apart in 2022, it was the quality of their pass and catch and tightness of their maul that were the foundations that won them the series.

France have just won the Six Nations on the back of their ability to execute all the macro and micro skills under pressure, and what set the Blues apart last year was not the new brand of football they showcased, but the accuracy and dynamism of their execution.

The game plan was simple and by week three, every opponent knew what they would be facing.

The Blues were predictable but that was beside the point because even though defenders knew where they needed to be, they couldn’t contain the power of Patrick Tuipulotu, Ofa Tu’ungafasi, Hoskins Sotutu and then the auxiliary smash-and-drive work of wings Caleb Clarke and Mark Tele’a.

It was the speed at which the runners came into contact, the dynamism which they drove through tacklers and their relentless low body heights that hurt teams, and it’s those three factors that can still win the Blues another championship in 2025 – if they can rekindle them.

The Blues don’t need to rip everything up and start again – they just need to get better at what they are doing and trust that their approach has not horribly dated in the space of just 12 months.

There were long periods against the Chiefs in which the Blues controlled possession and territory and put their opponents into that defensive grind that so few survived in 2024.

But they lacked patience at times, just as they lacked some of the intensity that was prevalent in their championship-winning campaign.

Getting Sotutu back from suspension will help in the quest to lift the intensity and once Beauden Barrett has recovered from a broken hand, there will be a backline orchestrator who can ensure the Blues better retain their attacking shape.

Sitting down in ninth place is hardly the start Cotter dreamed of, but “Vern Ball” can still win the Blues another championship.