View photos: Blues v Crusaders rivalryKEY POINTS:
It's pretty much last-chance saloon time for the Blues - and they know it.
A team that started the Super 14 in blazing fashion has seen its star grow dimmer week after week. Impressive victories became lucky scrapes.
It didn't take long until those lucky scrapes became deserved
losses.
Now, the flame that is the Blues' season is on the verge of extinction. They have lost two straight - thrashed in Sydney by the Waratahs and humbled at home by the Brumbies.
A third successive loss and, although they currently sit just two points outside the play-off spots, it is curtains for the Blues.
Awaiting them in Christchurch tonight are Robbie Deans' metronomic Crusaders, an outfit stung by a first defeat against the Chiefs last week, and who would love nothing more than to erase the Blues from the title equation for another year.
The Blues have been desperately trying to find a spark as their season slipped into freefall.
That Canterbury is tonight's foe should ensure no lack of enthusiasm, although playmaker Nick Evans doesn't believe effort has been the problem.
Coach David Nucifora has been criticised for a lack of rotation that appeared to have burned out key players but Evans insists the squad's energy levels are fine as they come off their bye-week.
"Look, it has been a little bit frustrating," says Evans, whose early season head injury coincided with the Blues going off the boil.
"As a team, the endeavour has been there.
"We have been trying really hard but a few errors at crucial times have been letting us down.
"It hasn't been individuals, it has been across the board, people making mistakes at the wrong time.
"So it is up to everybody really to knuckle down and pull the finger out, put those mistakes behind us and play like we did in those first three games.
"We have been playing with intensity, we have been travelling really well. We have been training like demons, it is just a matter of putting [that] into games. That is where we have been lacking."
Evans also dismissed the notion that off-field distractions, including the ongoing contract negotiations of himself and other senior players - and Nucifora's rumoured return to Australia next year - have harmed the team.
"I don't believe for one minute that that is affecting us at all. We are being brutally honest and taking it on ourselves.
"It is the mistakes [the players] are doing that are letting ourselves down.
"It is nothing off the field."
Deans' teams specialise in suffocation, a method that has served the Blues' opponents well in recent times.
The Blues' backs held two meetings over their bye period dedicated to figuring out a way to defeat the rush defences that have stymied them since their round-three win over the Cheetahs, when they racked up 50 points to claim their last four-try bonus point.
Evans is taking it upon himself to get the side's offence back on track.
"Teams have come up with a strategy to beat us - with a rushing line and coming up fast at us - so it is up to myself and the other guys outside me to take a bit of extra depth and use the forwards around us a bit better than we have been doing."
The Chiefs had shown where the Crusaders were vulnerable when they beat them last Friday night. It was up to the Blues to exploit those weaknesses.
"They usually back up pretty well after a loss so it is going to be no easy feat going down there and coming away with a win.
"But there are certain things the Chiefs showed us; their loosies played pretty well, they bullied them and beat them up and that is something we are going to have to take down there."
Forget about style or grace, the Blues need to win any way they can.
"It is not time to try to play well, it is time to win," Evans said. "We have to win, it is as simple as that."
