Victorious Auckland Blues player Carlos Spencer celebrates following the the Global Tens Final. Photo / Photosport
Victorious Auckland Blues player Carlos Spencer celebrates following the the Global Tens Final. Photo / Photosport
It's a brave new world indeed when the greatest Hurricanes player in history is coaching the Blues and the most quintessential Blues player of all time ends up at the Hurricanes.
This is professional rugby though - no boundaries, no barriers, no ties to the past and coaches taking jobsthat may appear to conflict their histories but don't really because they are rationalised as steps on a career ladder and a means to pay the mortgage.
It's not a world for the nostalgic to get all emotional about and yet the announcement that Carlos Spencer has signed as an assistant coach at the Hurricanes feels like something the nostalgic really should be quite wound up and emotional about.
Spencer defined the Blues in the glory years. Originally from Levin, he arrived in Auckland as a teenager and became the face of a Blues side that the rest of New Zealand came to dislike and admire in equal measure.
The Blues were gloriously inventive in Spencer's time. They had swagger, pomp and a touch of arrogance but they also had grit and resilience, a capacity to take as well as give and when Spencer was in the No.10 shirt between 1996 and 2004, the Blues had a clear sense of identity and purpose.
They revelled in the rest of the country's jealousy and resentment and even the most one-eyed, hate-filled Cantabrians must have had, bundled within their anger, an element of respect for Spencer in 2004 when he famously pulled off a 100 metre try to win the game in Christchurch, strut to the corner to touch the ball down, give the crowd the finger and then boot the impossibly hard conversion to deny the Crusaders a bonus point.
That try so aggressively and magnificently displayed the values that defined the Blues at that time - adventurous, confident, bold and defiant. Spencer flicking the finger was a statement of acknowledgment that he knew he was hated in Christchurch, seen as a latte-drinking, house-price obsessive Jaffa, but he didn't care. He was happily all that, a Blues man to the core and proud to say it.
That his first Super Rugby coaching job in New Zealand is going to be with the Hurricanes isn't really the troubling part.
Carlos Spencer and the victorious Auckland Blues player's celebrate in their dressing room following the the Global Tens Tournament. Photo / Photosport
They had a vacancy and the Blues didn't. But what Spencer shifting to Wellington has done, is highlight how little connection the Blues have with their history: with their former greats.
It's an astonishing fact that in 22 years the Blues have never had a coach who ever played for them.
The Crusaders, the tournament's most successful club, have in stark contrast, never gone outside their family.
In their earliest years, they used coaches ingrained in the Canterbury system, before former captain Todd Blackadder took over to be replaced by his former teammate Scott Robertson.
The Crusaders of today know their legacy. They know about those who have gone before and while they are writing new chapters, there is always a connecting thread to the old.
Such continuity is not evident at the Blues, where players come, players go and they leave so little trace.
The Blues feel culturally transient in comparison with the Crusaders whose roots were planted on day one and have been nurtured since.
The Blues don't have a former player on their board either.
A situation made to appear glaringly remiss by the fact Sir Michael Jones - a former All Black and an inspirational figure with the intellect and gravitas to make a difference - was never tapped on the shoulder, by the Blues yet the Tasman Rugby Union recommended and campaigned for him to successfully be elected on to the board of New Zealand Rugby.
Why the Blues have seemingly shunned their past, or at least been reluctant to overtly celebrate it and keep it alive in their coaching or executive appointments, is particularly difficult to understand when the first 10 years of their existence were outstanding.
