Rugby: Mealamu engine drives Blues

Rene Ranger looks for an opening against the Crusaders at Eden Park. Photo / Getty Images

Blues captain Keven Mealamu defied convention again to lead his side to a stirring opening Super 15 victory against their great Crusaders rivals.

Like most of his test colleagues, Mealamu was supposed to be working his way into match fitness and into the conference series.

Even his coach, Pat Lam, had expected he would get 60 minutes from his skipper before he had to rest him at Eden Park.

Instead it was Mealamu who surged then smeared his way through tryline defender Andy Ellis to claim the winning try seven minutes from fulltime.

We have seen these trademark bursts before with Mealamu tucked low into a compact sprinting form, the ball nestled close to his chest, powering away from a breakdown.

Nothing out of the ordinary from an extraordinary rugby player.

But this latest triumph to seal the Blues 24-22 win, came after Mealamu seemed to retrieve every kickoff, control many of the drives, lead the scrum and lineout setpiece and be front and centre of the defensive line.

For goodness sake, the man is nearly 32. Most of his early rugby life was played as a flanker, until he changed his role and has now carved out 83 tests as an All Black hooker.

He is the only Blues player to have played 100 games for his franchise.

He is desperate to play the World Cup in his own country this year, he deserved to work gradually towards that dream.

But he also has a Blues side to lead, a squad laden with talented players who have had an infuriating lack of success in the last seven seasons since they took the 2003 title.

For all sorts of reasons, Mealamu wanted to be at the coalface setting the template for this season even though he was not at full match fitness.

Team enforcer Jerome Kaino was blowing hard during the match and was staggered by his captain's contribution.

"He is just one of those captains who leads by actions and he got through a ton of work. Our plan was to beat them up front and he was leading.

"Kevvie was barking for the whole 80 minutes, he had enough breath for that, I didn't, and it just showed in his performance.

"I've seen that [low scuttling driving run] before and it is definitely a trademark of his. Andy [Ellis] has a low centre of gravity, but he was no show."

Mealamu's contribution was a stunning personal start and another reminder to comeback All Black hooking colleague Andrew Hore, about the contest he faces to claim a test start.

"It's a big year so we are all in good shape, I've been back a little longer than in the past," Mealamu said.

The task for Lam, Mealamu and the Blues is to push on from that start and reduce the inconsistent performances which have marred their work in recent seasons.

They had a ropey start, 13 points adrift after incurring the initial displeasure of referee Chris Pollock and tries to Sean Maitland and Ellis.

Both came from genius moments involving gifted fullback Israel Dagg.

He weighted a clever grubber kick down the line for his wing to run onto the first and then, after Robbie Fruean smashed through the defence, was in support to tease the defenders and offload a pass to his halfback.

Many of the 32,700 crowd probably felt at halftime that a Blues comeback was unlikely. They were not doing much wrong but the Crusaders had the squeeze on them and were slowly eking out points.

"We had to be calm, we changed out focus, held possession and applied some pressure," Lam said.

The Blues got their kickstart when Rene Ranger found some space, broke tackles and offloaded to the faithful support of Benson Stanley.

Possession was turning, the Crusaders could not get back into the match.

"We let them off the hook really, we did not show enough patience, we were not clinical enough on defence," visiting skipper Kieran Read said.

Tony Woodcock bashed over the line after a series of drives before his skipper completed the comeback.

Both Dan Carter and Stephen Brett missed a number of goalkicks which could have swung the result but it is early days.

This was an absorbing contest between the New Zealand heavyweights, a hike in standard from the opening game at the CakeTin and a mouth-watering entree before their return match in the second last game of pool play.