KEY POINTS:
In one of life's happiest coincidences, the Blues coach David Nucifora called for a six-team playoff series in the Super 14 just hours before his team finished - drum roll - sixth.
Nucifora could claim that when he set about setting the Super 14 right after Friday night's
ultimately hollow victory over the Hurricanes, his team still had a chance of making the top four.
But it was only one of those mathematical chances that pop up if you use a calculator which can't compute rugby, as is mainly the case. The Blues already had both feet in Loserville, although this problem is nothing a decent extended playoff story can't sort out.
Yippee. Instead of bombing out of the Super 14 playoffs, the mighty Blues have been robbed by a dastardly system that they only found out about in 1996.
Nucifora's suddenly-revealed dream for southern hemisphere rugby is not necessarily a bad one - although it struggles to shape up under scrutiny - but his timing is definitely appalling, although also very good if the aim is to deflect rather than reflect on the record book.
It's like waking up to find the Chiefs calling for a seven-team playoff series, or the wonderfully named Auto and General Lions franchise suggesting that the entire competition be played again.
(What is Auto and General by the way? ... I digress.)
In situations like the one facing the Blues after Friday night's game, the classy response is to cop the season on the chin, hope for the best from the other games, and leave your convenient competition revamps for a few weeks.
Yet not Nucifora, who boldly claimed that Friday was evidence that his side probably deserved to be in the finals series, presumably because it just won't be the same without a few more sparkling Anthony Boric tries.
Auckland used to be the mightiest rugby province in the world, but now it points to the hurdles faced. It makes you weep.
Friday night's match at Eden Park was a gripping battle and wonderful sport, with the big crowd providing an atmosphere we've been craving all season.
The Blues eked out a meritorious win although watching the team from the world capital of football flair kicking like a mule is not overly satisfying.
Outscored by two wingers' tries to Boric's lone and magnificent rumble, the Blues may have been unsure whether to celebrate or commiserate but decided to celebrate anyway.
Maybe they didn't want to spoil the break-up party, since many of them won't catch up with each other again for a few years.
But as any realist would have told them, the season was almost certainly over already, partly because they had fallen a whopping three tries short of a bonus point against the Hurricanes.
This try-scoring failure hardly got a mention, of course.
"I'm incredibly proud of what we achieved," said Nucifora of the season. This begs the question: what type of superlatives would he have found had the Blues actually won the competition?
This pride apparently stemmed from making do without 11 players from last season.
Yeah, but didn't the Blues actually make the semifinals last year even though they were denied their All Blacks for the first half of the competition.
And what about getting Nick Evans back in compensation?
And while we're at it, who is to blame for losing Ali Williams - the really crucial player loss with all due respect to the many Sam Biddles fans out there.
Nucifora was also disappointed that the video referee ruled out a Jerome Kaino try although it looked a perfectly good decision after the usual 10,000 replays.
As for the Super 14 top six idea - a great concept - but there's the little matter of the competition being played in three countries along with God knows how many time zones and altitude differences involved.
Say a team from New Zealand finishes sixth, then travels to Durban where it wins to set up a match in Sydney, then has to return to Pretoria for the final where their opponents have been playing and reconditioning for the previous three weeks.
This spells trouble with a capital T, especially if you are trying to showcase the Super 14 final as meaningful rather than a latter day version of chucking Christians in a ring with a load of ravenous Lions.
Anyway, nice idea that top-six playoff business, especially when you are about to finish sixth.
As for judging the Blues' season, there are a lot of formulas that can be used for end-of-season reports.
Do you judge a team by:
A) Where it appeared headed for much of the season;
B) Against the pre-season predictions;
C) By its record of the past few seasons;
D) By its longstanding record;
E) Using the excuses as a guide;
F) Not using the excuses as a guide;
A combination of B, C, D and F is not bad, and you could also try this one.
When the Blues roared off on a fast start and to much acclaim - although funnily enough there was no mention of a top-six playoff system at this point - no one fluttered an eyelid. There were no great cries that a team of knuckleheads were about to turn the competition on its ear, that one of the great sporting underdog journeys was being unleashed on an unsuspecting population.
Most regarded it as par for the course, especially as it was widely regarded that stupid world champion South Africa would take decades to figure out the new rules and Australia was on a mission to revive the woeful Wallabies.
The new rules were just made for the mighty Blues at this point.
Gremlins in the works appeared midseason, accompanied by suggestions that horrible opponents were picking on the Blues by slowing their ball down.
And now they've been laid low by the top-four final system.
It's just not fair.
