It's trench warfare for Blues and Bulls

By WYNNE GRAY

The benchmark or the basement. That scenario will accompany the Blues for every game in the final stretch of the Super 12.

A messy start to their campaign means they cannot afford any mishaps in the run home if they want to defend the title they won so impressively last year.

As the only New Zealand side playing at home this Easter, the Blues have to lay a marker down tomorrow against the Bulls. They have to introduce good, in the rugby sense, into Friday.

Before the series started, Blues coach Peter Sloane consistently talked up the belief in the side, the confidence the squad had after their 2003 success.

Sloane was also cautious enough to add several qualifications. No team, he said, had a right to rugby supremacy and the Blues had to get their set-piece work in strong shape if their expansive style was to follow.

Had Carlos Spencer and Joe Rokocoko not returned from serious damage last week, the Blues would have succumbed to a Waratahs side because of their set-piece fragility. They were touched up in the scrums and hounded in the lineouts.

That inspection will only intensify at Albany against a Bulls pack which is overflowing with test tight-forwards.

Working out the Bulls' game plan will not take too long. especially if conditions are testing. They will want to keep the ball with their driving forwards and use the angles of the field through the tactical kicking of five-eighths Derick Hougaard.

There is not much difference between the two packs in the weight and height statistics, but a consistent theme from NZ sides centres on the physical abrasiveness of South African teams.

Like the All Blacks, whose forwards stuttered through pool play before splintering the Springboks in last year's World Cup quarter-final, the Blues have to flick the switch for this match. It will be trench warfare for the forwards.

They had been much better against the Hurricanes before sliding against the Waratahs, with the coaching staff no wiser about the decline.

Spencer was clearly exasperated after returning from his fractured jaw to find his forwards unable to give the backline some decent ball.

Their "bread and butter" drills, as Sloane terms them, were mediocre and it was only the brilliance of Spencer and the speed and evasion of Rokocoko which got the champions home.

Nine All Blacks are in the Blues tomorrow, but of those only Doug Howlett, Spencer and Meeuws could be classed as seasoned internationals.

In patches against the Hurricanes and Waratahs, signs of last season's exhilarating play returned. But just as quickly, those hints and memories evaporated.

The Bulls arrive, rested after a spell on the Gold Coast, with three wins and a draw, and a feeling that if they can tip up the Blues, they can make the playoffs.

* Blues vs Bulls, North Harbour Stadium, Albany, 7.35pm tomorrow