Failing Blues must plan ahead

Coach John Kirwan raged about his team's flimsy first half. Photo / Getty Images

There's no pity, not even a snigger, when the Blues' latest defeat is mentioned.

In sporting circles and rugby conversation, failure has become the accepted outcome for the Blues and they stayed true to that course against the Highlanders.

There are shrugs and phrases such as "what do you expect" when their latest result is posted. Blues and lose is as routinely entwined as tea and toast.

Not that there was any acceptance in the Blues' dressing room at the break as coach John Kirwan raged about his team's flimsy first half. Perhaps that's part of the problem. They've heard that sort of thunder too often for it to have enough effect.

It hasn't mattered this year whether one mob or another starts although it did seem an awful lot of All Black firepower wasted on the bench. Maybe the Blues staff are not getting through to them or else the national coaches have been whispering about rest and rotation.

Not that it applies to captain Jerome Kaino, who continues to pound through his work and battle through his post-match losing conversations.

The backs have lacked fluency throughout the season and they fluffed all sorts of lines on Saturday in Dunedin, both on attack and in their defensive channels.

Sanzar statistics show the Highlanders beat only seven defenders in the match yet scored three tries, while the Blues beat 31 tacklers and scored only four tries.

The Blues have seven games left in this miserable season and if they won the lot they'd finish with a 50 per cent season record.

There's more chance of Dave Dobbyn coaching this side than their going undefeated for the rest of their programme, which includes two games with the Crusaders, the Hurricanes, Highlanders and the Bulls.

Despite the public silence from the Blues executive and board, members of that group need to be getting their plans sorted about appointing a new head coach to take a new squad to the 2016 training headquarters at Alexandra Park.

Hopefully that hush conceals feverish work on all those projects and is a similar contrast to Kirwan's soothing public utterances and his dressing room frenzy.

If that's not the case, someone should constantly remind the Blues board to look at the table where only bonus points separate them from last behind the Force.

All the talk of being just off the pace, moving in the right direction, making gains or giving others a hurry-up does not cut it. Not when the losing pattern continues, not when the Blues play as they did in the first half.

Results are the currency in sport and right now the Blues are bankrupt.