The new Blues jerseys have the coordinates for their local prison on the sleeve

Where do the coordinates on the New Zealand Super Rugby teams’ sleeves take you? We checked on Google Maps, and it’s not their home grounds.

New Zealand’s Super Rugby franchises released their special edition Lions tour jerseys last week, with each team’s hottest players modelling them together on a farm and individually in a series of boy band photo shoots.

One innovative feature of the cartology-themed ‘Territory Jersey’ design is a set of map coordinates printed on the sleeve. This inspired a genius Twitter user called Master Grassonist to enter these coordinates in Google Maps, and make this incredible discovery: the Blues jerseys bear the coordinates for the local prison.

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The 996-bed Mount Eden Corrections Facility (36°52′ S, 174°46′ E) is one of New Zealand’s most famous prisons, which has hosted some of the country’s most notorious criminals. It is a little over 2 kilometres as the crow flies from Eden Park, the Blues’ home ground.

The other teams’ coordinates are also a bit off the mark. The Chiefs’ map reference, 37°47′ S, 175°19′ E, takes us to the middle of the University of Waikato’s cricket fields, a little more than 4 kilometres from Waikato Stadium.

In Wellington, the coordinates on the Hurricanes’ sleeves place us in the middle of the Botanical Gardens (41°17′ S, 174°46′ E), just across from the Children’s Garden and slightly under 2 kilometres from Westpac Stadium.

The Crusaders’ sleeves lead us directly to the middle of three standalone units at 13 Eversleigh Street (43°31′ S, 172°38′ E), just north of the CBD and just under 4 kilometres from AMI Stadium.

Meanwhile, in Dunedin the Highlanders’ coordinates plonk us in the middle of Bethune’s Gully (45°50′ S, 170°33′ E), an area popular with walkers and mountain bikers to the north of the city. It is 4.5 kilometres from Forsyth Barr Stadium.

The uniform inaccuracy suggests sending the Blues to prison (where they arguably belong after Friday night’s disappointing performance against the Chiefs) was probably not a deliberate troll by an Auckland-hating adidas employee. Instead it would seem more likely to be an unfortunate result of abbreviating the numbers so they were short enough to fit on the cuff of a rugby shirt sleeve.

Still, the coordinates did prove strangely prophetic last weekend. The Blues were criminally bad against the Chiefs, who in turn controlled the game in such a way that it looked academic (please bear with me). The Hurricanes are finding Super Rugby a walk in the park after their second 50+ point win in as many weeks. And the Crusaders made themselves at home inside the opposition 22 in the final quarter of Saturday’s game after the Highlanders stumbled off the beaten track, became disorientated and couldn’t find their way back into the lead.