Blues 2018
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Blues Rugby
The official home of the Blues rugby team. Buy tickets and merchandise, get the latest news, view results and go behind-the-scenes with our players.
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From an article on stuff
stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/super-rugby/103041165/super-rugby-five-things-to-look-out-for-this-weekendWhat happens if the Blues beat the Sunwolves in Tokyo? It would insult no-one's intelligence to say the Blues should win this match on Saturday, and by a handsome margin, to extend the Sunwolves' winless run in 2018. But so what if they do? What does it really mean? The reality is the Blues are placed second-last heading into this round, their play-off hopes pirouetting at the end of a frayed rope. There's a danger a bonus-point win at Prince Chichibu Memorial Stadium would divert attention from the real issue, which is whether this team is simply in a holding pattern. If that's the case, it's hardly good enough. Blues chairman Tony Carter and his board members have some decisions to make. Super Rugby teams are like any other business, they like to plan ahead. It's paramount they prove to their players that their organisation is doing the best for them. Which, in turn, puts the heat on Carter and co to decide whether to offer coach Tana Umaga a contract extension, or to go to the market and seek alternatives. And do NZ Rugby have a role to play in trying to blow life some back into the Blues, a club that hasn't made the playoffs since Pat Lam guided them to fourth place in 2011? Any assistance would be appreciated, surely. This story isn't over by a long shot. -
We've covered this before, but it's worth a revisit given the Blues' ongoing shortcomings. Should the Auckland underachievers renew or tear up Tana Umaga's contract which is about to run out?
Hinton: They should definitely not renew, put it that way. My advice would be wait and see. If the Blues continue to lose regularly and show no signs of coming together into something resembling a competitive rugby team, then I don't see how they can bring him back. I love Tana, and he was one of my favourite All Blacks, but it's hard not to see, as a young coach, that this might be beyond even his scope. It would not be terminal for his career either. Remember Joe Schmidt was a young assistant coach at the Blues from 2004-07, and didn't turn out too bad.
Ad FeedbackBidwell: They should never have hired him and, in real professional sport, he'd be gone by now. Because it's rugby, we limp along to the end of the season. And then some, probably. These are the Blues; they're really not a particularly impressive organisation. So having appointed Umaga, and John Kirwan before him, you imagine they will probably extend him. Umaga might turn out to be a fine coach and he didn't hire himself. But it's hard to see how he's the man for this job at this time.
Van Royen: Waiting to see if the franchise can dig themselves out of a mighty hole first is surely the only option. It would be staggering if chief executive Michael Redman put a contract in front of him before then.
Cully: A tricky one. It's not just whether Umaga gets a new contract, it's how it is structured. Perhaps the best option is to give him a two-year extension with some performance clauses in the Blues' favour should it not work out again. There are some big names possibly coming back to NZ in 2020.
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Super Rugby Team of the Week - Round 8
After a week off, Alex McLeod returns to run you through his next edition of the Super Rugby Team of the Week.
Akira Ioane (Blues) must be mentioned for his supreme defensive showing against the Chiefs, where he made 19 tackles and won two turnovers for his team.
Should he decide to stay in Japan for another two years and complete the required residency tenure, Michael Little would be a valuable asset to the Japanese national team, as his showings for the Sunwolves this season are beginning to prove. The former Blues midfielder has been a constant attacking weapon for the Sunwolves in 2018, and while they went down 50-29 against the Waratahs over the weekend, Little didn’t go down wondering what could have been. The diminutive second-five carried the ball 15 times to chalk up an incredible 132 metres from a trio of clean breaks. His ability to weave his way through and around defences proved to be hugely profitable for his side, as the 25-year- old scored one try and assisted two others. A solitary turnover won for the Japanese outfit capped off a sensational display for Little.
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@bones I think what he means is the NZ teams are majority owned by a national body, who then dictate certain things (e.g. ABs have to have 2 weeks off during Super Rugby). If it was an NBA team the owner could just fire the coach mid season.
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@kiwimurph said in Blues 2018:
@bones I think what he means is ... If it was an NBA team the owner could just fire the coach mid season.
Well, if he does mean that then he is a tool.
The NBA (Euro football, baseball etc) have huge squads (and can trade mid-season to an extent). A coach coming in mid-season can reshape his squad members in a real way.
More importantly, basketball and football have much more interchangeable positions and much more easier changed systems of attack and defence. Teams can, and do, change between 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 for instance. You simply cannot do this mid-season in rugby.
Then there's season length, which is not the 9 months of those sports. By mid-season in Super Rugby, having made the decision to sack your coach, you are only a couple of months from the end of the season anyway. No new coach, even assuming a good one is just hanging around waiting to be picked, is going to take on that sort of poison. So it would have to be an interim promotion of one of the assistants.
American Football is a fully professional sport. Yet it selects coaches for a whole season, for pretty much exactly the same reasons. (Very occasionally owners get stupid and sack a coach mid-season, but they have to wait until the season ends before they can get a decent replacement, so it's largely about peevishness.)
Sacking Tana would leave the team Tana selected and, since the coach taking over would virtually have to come from inside the organisation then most of the game plan would stay the same too.
So you'd gain nothing in terms of results, and you'd gain a reputation as an organisation liable to do the stupid reflex sacking you see in Euro Football -- win the league one year with a team expected to be relegated, then sacked halfway through the next season!
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@Chester-Draws on the other hand, the Blues season is over and it would give the new coach the rest of the season evaluate the players, coaches, facilities/resources and give valuable information for what needs to change.
Keeping a shit coach like Tana just means we spin our wheels making the same mistakes and waste the rest of the year.
It would also allow us to attract talent when we go to recruit. Who’s going to come to the Blues and get “coached” by this guy?
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@bones said in Blues 2018:
@tim "real professional sport"?
Bidwell, if he was a real sports journalist we might care what he has to say. Bin it with all his other mutterings.
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A minute after the last game you sack him. That gives heaps of time to appoint a new coach. Especially if you do some discrete head-hunting first.
In the meantime "he has the board's full confidence" followed by a couple of Herald articles that firmly refute that he will be sacked. That should get the message out without having to actively shame him.
How many players will you lose in that time? You're not allowed to recruit mid-season.
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@chester-draws someone forgot to tell NH teams they can't recruit mid-season
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@chester-draws said in Blues 2018:
A minute after the last game you sack him. That gives heaps of time to appoint a new coach. Especially if you do some discrete head-hunting first.
In the meantime "he has the board's full confidence" followed by a couple of Herald articles that firmly refute that he will be sacked. That should get the message out without having to actively shame him.
How many players will you lose in that time? You're not allowed to recruit mid-season.
In the meantime lets hope the Ioane brothers don't abandon ship. That's the risk you take holding onto a crap coach, as well as the complete inability to attract anybody new.
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@kirwan I'm not suggesting they hold onto him. He would never have started this season if I'd been the one to make the decision.
I just think that sacking a rugby coach mid-season is not ever helpful. Which coach do you think you would get who wouldn't be there come season's end? Who do you think would be willing and able to turn them around in the time left as interim coach?
The Ioane's can't be poached until season end, and by then will know the change is coming. We don't have mid-season transfers (mercifully).
The situation in sports with enormous squads, easy to change systems and 9+ month seasons is very different. Rugby is not "unprofessional" simply because it doesn't copy the likes of the NBA.
And anyway, until the board gets sorted, why do you think that a replacement made in haste will be better? My money is that Tana's replacement will be worse. Only then, having reached the joke levels of the Warriors, will people realise that doing things the old way really isn't working.
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@chester-draws said in Blues 2018:
@Kirwan
I just think that sacking a rugby coach mid-season is not ever helpful. Which coach do you think you would get who wouldn't be there come season's end? Who do you think would be willing and able to turn them around in the time left as interim coach?The Ioane's can't be poached until season end, and by then will know the change is coming. We don't have mid-season transfers (mercifully).
And anyway, until the board gets sorted, why do you think that a replacement made in haste will be better? My money is that Tana's replacement will be worse. Only then, having reached the joke levels of the Warriors, will people realise that doing things the old way really isn't working.
Just on the points in bold.
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Easy --> you put assistant Steve Jackson in as interim coach and see what he can do. I'm sure he would be a candidate for the new job next year anyway so it gives him a chance to show his wares.
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I'm not sure that's correct at all - for example the Blues announced Otere Black's signing in late June last year (with the deal being hinted at in the media earlier than that). That was well before the Blues final regular season game in July in Tokyo v Sunwolves let alone the playoffs.
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I don't think the idea is that the decision is made in haste but rather that you get started on the decision earlier. Get started now rather than 3 months time.
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