What went wrong for the Blues after their championship breakthrough

The encore for the Blues breakthrough championship season in 2024 has not been pretty, slumping as low as 9th over the first half of the season and ending up in the wooden spoon battle.

The season is not over and the Blues have lifted themselves off the canvas to stay in the playoff race, but as defending champions, it shouldn’t be this way.

Blues fans would’ve thought that this roster would compete for multiple championships, especially after getting Beauden Barrett back and only really losing one starter, Akira Ioane.

What happened in 2025?

They built their 2024 championship campaign on a brand of power rugby under first year head coach Vern Cotter. It was a carry-heavy, down main street approach utilising the size up front to bully opponents.

The double-barrelled tandem of No.8 Hoskins Sotutu and flex blindside Akira Ioane, who has played a lot of No.8 over his career, powered this pack in tight channels. Lock Patrick Tuipulotu was another world class carry option, and prop Ofa Tu’ungafasi another All Black bringing notable size and power.

They doubled down on this strength and battered teams up the middle. This worked, also becoming contrarian to the norm in Super Rugby, which is all about fast-paced wide attack. In the red zone, the Blues would narrow down and power their way over. Hoskins Sotutu finished with 12 tries, the most in the competition.

Wingers Caleb Clarke and Mark Tele’a still finished top five in tries as well, with 10 and nine tries respectively, but a big part of the game plan was sending these guys up the middle as well. Clarke and Tele’a would routinely join the forwards in the pick-and-go strategy, helping turn a crack into a chasm in the ruck defence.

Tele’a, as one of the hardest guys to put down in the world, he could shake a couple of defenders around the ruck and get the momentum going. Same with Clarke, who has elite power. In 2025, none of these three players feature in the top 10 try scorers, resulting in a huge reduction in points production.

This is the number one issue for the Blues in 2025. Their one-way attack became stale, really fast, and they didn’t evolve or find a comparable replacement for Akira Ioane.

They rank 10th out of 11 in points scored with 23.3 per game, and ninth in tries with 3.3 per game. They rank dead last in total carry metres, last in line breaks per game (4.2), and second-to-last in defenders beaten per game (19.8).

Ioane left for Japan and Sotutu has missed a handful of games this year, while the All Black snub has seen Sotutu become a different player in 2025. Arguably the MVP last year, not being picked by the All Blacks has negatively impacted him one way or another. Ofa Tu’ungagasi has only played four games in 2025.

Anton Segner stepped up to start more in Ioane’s absence, but his best position has arguably not been found. As a schoolboy he was purely an openside, and the Blues have tried to turn him into a ball carrier.

Once the Blues’ power game was disarmed, they could not find another way of playing that could produce try-scoring opportunities.

No one epitomises this problem more than the production of star All Black centre Rieko Ioane, who is basically starving out there for quality attacking ball. After nine games this year before the Force game, he had four line breaks and seven defenders beaten.

At 28 years old, he isn’t the same player as five years ago when he first moved to centre, but he is still a premier athlete who, on his day, should be lighting up Super Rugby Pacific.

The Blues just don’t have a game plan to put him in a position to shine. This is a player who is one of NZR’s highest-paid athletes, who stayed loyal on a long-term contract, and should be the Blues’ most marketable player. He should be on highlight reels every week, and he’s not.

The return of Beauden Barrett as the game driver has brought a high volume of kicking. He’s ranked second in kicks per 80 minutes and second in total kick metres.  They want that pack down the field, and the easiest way to do that is to kick long.

It’s always been part of Barrett’s game, he loves a kick-tennis battle to open up the field and create offside defenders before scanning for broken field opportunities. But it relies on the return serve, which doesn’t always happen.

Contestables bring some element of pressure on the backfield and can open up fast-break opportunities off regathers, which they don’t get with Barrett’s long kick game.

The Blues had two of the best wingers in the competition last year in Mark Tele’a and Caleb Clarke. This year they are a year older, and their statistical production is down. At the same time, they let Caleb Tangitau go south, who has outperformed both of them.

This is just one of those coincidences, but it is unfortunate for the Blues. Before Tangitau’s injury, he was a top-three player in most attacking categories, and is still top 10 in line breaks with 13.

The Highlanders’ new weapon has the second-best dominant carry percentage in the competition, at 83.3%, and he gets over the gain line 80.4% of the time. Clarke betters this at 81.3, but Tele’a is at 71.4. Tangitau also leads the competition in tackle evasion. This is the kind of attacking production the Blues would have loved to have this year.

The loss of Tangitau is meaningful because the Blues’ backline is on the old side, and 2025 is showing that they may need to hit the rebuild button. They don’t have many backs under age 25, with many headed towards 30.

They let Tangitau go and last season saw fullback Jacob Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens also go south for a starting role.

They did blood young midfielder Xavi Taele, a New Zealand U20 rep who has a big future. He did have an impressive debut in a 32-31 loss to the Chiefs, but the guy who shined in that game was 24-year-old Corey Evans.

Evans is very versatile, playing schoolboy rugby as a first five before moving to the midfield at U20 level. He played at fullback against the Chiefs and finished with a try and a try assist, two line breaks and three defenders beaten. He’s played nine games but only started four times this season.

The standout player has been AJ Lam, who has been their best back covering midfield and wing. He reached his 50th Super cap recently and has elevated his game in 2025, leading the Blues in line breaks (7). Lam is 26, while most of the backline is similar age or older.

Despite ranking at the bottom of attacking statistics, the Blues rank high in some defensive categories. The defence is still strong, with the second-highest tackle completion at 88.9%. The set piece is still good with a top-five lineout and a scrum operating at over 90 per cent.

Discipline is an issue, ranking 10th, but it is perhaps a symptom of frustrations in attack, not being able to get things done with ball-in-hand.

The stale attack has cost them with two one-point losses, one to the Brumbies at home and the thriller in Hamilton against the Chiefs, and a three-point loss to the Crusaders in wet conditions. Those three games, if won, would be enough to put them into the top four.

If they are to make a late run to make the playoffs, they will need a resurgent attack.

It wasn’t producing enough early in the season, but there have been a couple of explosive showings recently, putting 36 on Moana and 40 on the Western Force. They have to keep finding answers on that side of the ball.

If they can’t do that and end up missing the playoffs, when they diagnose what went wrong, they can look at their attack as the reason why this encore season was a flop.