Blues and Crusaders: How New Zealand rugby's two biggest sides flipped their fortunes around
And so, at this stage of the 2025 season, it looks like 2024 was an aberration – a one-off year in which the Blues produced consistently controlled and accurate rugby to be crowned champions, while the Crusaders forgot entirely who they are and what they are all about.
The surprising part of what has happened this year is not the Crusaders' revival. Last year, they were beset with what at times felt like a never-ending injury list that saw them play for long periods without Scott Barrett and Will Jordan and, perhaps most significantly, without No 10 Fergus Burke, leaving them with a cohort of untried first fives.
On top of that, Rob Penney had arrived as the new head coach and struggled to select combinations and build cohesion.
It was all a bit of a mess, but the thing about a dynasty is that there is so much rugby intelligence plugged deep into the framework that the Crusaders knew how to accurately review their disastrous season and how to fix the problems they encountered.
When a side have such an ingrained culture, such an established way of doing things, there is a North Star by which the coaching and management group can be guided and a well-lit path to follow back to the top of the table.
The Crusaders used the off-season to find a new captain. Barrett led the team in 2024 and was also captain of the All Blacks – and the Crusaders had learned from Richie McCaw and Kieran Read that it's a smart move to relieve the national team captain from the responsibility of the Super job.
They have tapped into their DNA to remember they have a destructive scrum, stuck by Taha Kemara as their starting 10, built greater consistency in their key combinations – and the Crusaders of 2025 are playing like the Crusaders of 2017-2023.
It's like they have realised the whole system was there and working all the time – they just had to remember which lead went where.
That the Blues have found it so hard to maintain their 2024 form illustrates the difference between being a one-off champion club against being a dynasty club.
The Blues, under new head coach Vern Cotter, hit on a simple but effective game plan last year, in which they hyper-focused attacking in one area – around the ruck – with such relentlessness as to eventually break all defensive resistance.
Two things have happened this year – they haven't been able to replicate the same accuracy, intensity and patience that defined their championship-winning season, and they haven't been able to tap into an ingrained culture of excellence to come up with the right answers to adapt their game plan.
Against the Crusaders two weeks ago – a game the Blues had dominated but lost in the last minute – it looked as if they were maybe chugging into a higher gear and about to mount a late-season charge to the playoffs, with their pick-and-drive, hyper-focused game starting to find its old power and cohesion.
But on Friday against the Reds, they took three steps backwards and couldn't find the control, discipline, accuracy or calmness they needed.
The easy thing to do would be to say that they have failed to evolve strategically but their basic philosophy of playing a tight, driving game, supported by a territorial kicking strategy, still seems right.
Where they are being let down is in their set-piece work, which remains patchy. The lineout is hit and miss and the scrum looks vulnerable.
Again, the same problem evidenced in Christchurch was on show again in Brisbane, which is that their skill execution and decision-making deep inside the opposition red zone is erratic.
There is a lack of subtlety and variation when they shift the ball wider in their attempts to strike the killer blow after a sustained period of pick and drive and the A.J. Lam-Rieko Ioane midfield combination is potentially devastating but is not operating with enough finesse or element of surprise.
These are issues, particularly the volatile set-piece work, that dynasty clubs don't tend to have because there is an ability to consistently deliver the core parts of the game to the required level.
The Blues won a championship a particular way in 2024, but the demands of Super Rugby are such, that to do it again in 2025, they needed to build some variation without weakening the foundations.
They needed to not lose sight of who they are and how they play, and to add new levels to their game.
The Blues still have hope, albeit its fading, that they can find a way to retain their title in 2025, but they will already have learned that there is a huge difference between being a championship club and a dynasty club.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand's most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.
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