Recruits cool to hot city market

Auckland's high cost of living could deter top-ranked players. Photo / Getty Images

In such a train wreck of a season, the Blues accept they will be laughed out of town if they pin recruitment issues for 2016 on the rampant Auckland housing market and the disproportionate cost of living in the country's biggest city.

Nevertheless, they have a point. Put aside for one moment the specific issues of the Blues - the under performance, uncertainty around next year's coach, the boardroom standoff and the fact there are better options to consider.

Obviously these factors have a major bearing on why the Blues have tried, but failed, to recruit new players from outside the region.

The selection of so many young players in recent weeks hasn't been driven exclusively by need.

The past few weeks have been about seeing which of the emerging players in the wider 'Blues system' or even club football have the potential to play fulltime at this level.

As tempting as it is so to dwell on the specific shortcomings of the set-up as the overwhelming recruitment issue, they are nonetheless fixable. By next year, all of the current problems could be eradicated but the housing market will still be booming.

The reality won't change in a year that an entry-level Super Rugby contract of $70,000 a year will be a comfortable wage in four of the franchises and barely enough to exist in the other. A basic Super Rugby package in Dunedin goes an awful lot further than in Auckland and there is a case to consider that the Blues should be granted a larger budget than everyone else to give them a fairer chance to not only recruit but also retain players.

"We had the same thing in London," says Blues high-performance manager Tony Hanks, who had two stints with Wasps before returning to Auckland in 2013.

"If you are offering them 50k and Leeds or Newcastle are offering the same ... that is worth double. We have the same problem. I am amazed at how expensive it is to live in Auckland. From a recruitment point of view, if we are after someone from outside the region, say Canterbury or Dunedin, our offer, even if it is the same or slightly more, it is not going to be as attractive on a financial setting. It is an issue for recruitment. Because of our area, our focus really is the players within the region first and that has got to be the way. But if you have a hole in a position - we might need to go out to find a player in a certain position - that is where we are at a disadvantage. Even retention of those players ... it is the same thing."

Compounding the problem is that Auckland's tertiary institutions tend to be oversubscribed and, therefore, don't offer the same number of scholarships or incentives as universities in other New Zealand cities.

The bottom line is that Auckland is expensive and hard. There is the housing market to battle, and the traffic and sheer size of the city puts plenty off.

There's a perception problem and it's one that arguably the Blues need help to fix, however unpopular such a notion would be with the rest of the country.

"It is an emotional subject because the rest of the country isn't interested in an Auckland weighting just as in the Premiership," Hanks says. "No one was interested in a London weighting, so we have got to keep looking at ways we can even the playing field.

"We accept there is not going to be a lot of sympathy. There is a lot of focus on us getting our own backyard right, give players a reason to stay. We can do that through facilities, staff and opportunity but you have this quite significant roadblock in what it costs."