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KEY POINTS:
As the Hurricanes and Highlanders slipped and slapped their way through 80 minutes of mainly forgettable football on Friday night, it was, strangely, the Blues who would have been happiest with events at the Cake Tin.
Unless chief executive Andy Dalton has a change of heart about Carlos
Spencer, it will be the Highlanders' Daniel Bowden wearing the Blues No 10 jersey next year.
Tasesa Lavea will leave New Zealand in June to join French giants Clermont, whose backs are coached by former Blues assistant Joe Schmidt.
That will leave the position open for Bowden, the former Auckland Grammar pupil, who will be given all the support he needs to fill it. The 22-year-old was signed by Auckland in November last year and is seen, at the moment at least, as the long-term answer to a problem that has gone on too long without an adequate solution.
The Blues need a quality performer at first five around whom they can build a team. Lavea is not staying and Jimmy Gopperth has not committed long-term to the region and might be, at best, a good guy to have in reserve.
Bowden is the preferred option and his signing is starting to look like an astute move. For the second week in succession, Bowden scored a try through a combination of speed, determination, skill, innate timing and riding his luck.
How the television match official came to the conclusion the Highlander had legally grounded the ball is a mystery, but not one that should detract from the extraordinary skill and presence of mind Bowden showed when he gently nudged the ball over the line having beaten the Hurricanes cover to Conrad Smith's botched retrieval of a hack through.
There was more to Bowden's performance than just his opportunistic try. There was a cleverness to the timing of his offloads and the delayed way he brought his midfield into the game.
He also judged nicely when he should run himself and his execution was sharp too. He's by no means the finished product, however.
Last week against the Brumbies he missed the late conversion and then panicked from the restart and failed to clear the ball downfield, instead providing the Australians with the perfect position from which to begin their drop-goal mission.
Again in Wellington, there was evidence his tactical kicking is neither as accurate nor as long as it should be. With the Highlanders off to Sydney on Friday, the Blues coaching team will be intrigued to see whether Bowden can get a handle on the nuts and bolts of the first five's portfolio.
Hurricanes coach Colin Cooper will be similarly interested to see how his first five protege Daniel Kirkpatrick
copes at the toughest ground of them all - AMI Stadium - a few hours before the Highlanders kick off.
That is assuming Kirkpatrick, who was starting to feel his way into the game in Wellington, holds his place.
The Hurricanes were laborious and disjointed for much of the first half and guilty of kicking away too much possession. That wasn't necessarily the fault of Kirkpatrick who made some smart decisions when he moved the ball, but all the same, it's true that when Alby Mathewson entered the fray at halfback in the second half, Piri Weepu switched to first five and Ma'a Nonu and Conrad Smith were restored to the midfield, the Hurricanes finally found some rhythm.
If Zac Guildford can recover from injury, selection will be tricky for Cooper. Should he start with the Mathewson/Weepu combination or stick with Kirkpatrick?
Playing in Christchurch will accelerate the eduction of Kirkpatrick or it could be viewed as too big a risk when the Hurricanes are after points having lost their opening home game.
