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Steven Luatua interested in making a return to the Blues

Blues flanker Steven Luatua

Steven Luatua hasn’t turned his back on New Zealand rugby just yet.

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The 15-cap All Black left Kiwi shores in 2017 to venture north and take up a contract with the Bristol Bears; a move he hoped would add to his game.

Still just 28, there’s plenty of life left in Luatua’s career and speaking to Sky Sport’s Breakdown show he said he still had a goal to achieve with the Blues in Super Rugby.

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“One of my goals was always to come back and play 100 games for the Blues – I think I’m 20 or 30-odd short so that’s a couple of seasons,” he said.

“If they’ll take an old-timer, or someone off the bench, then I’d be happy to come and fill that role; locker-room banter, I’m there for it.”

It would be an addition to excite the Blues fans, who saw their team take big strides towards a resurgence this year before the competition was suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The addition of Luatua, as well as first five-eighth Beauden Barrett who is still yet to debut for the club, would no doubt be a welcome investment.

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However, a return home is still likely a number of years away for the back-rower, who re-signed with Bristol in late 2018 through to the end of the 2021 English Premiership season.

Luatua’s decision to head to the Northern Hemisphere so early in his career came as a surprise to many, by the said it was the right decision for him in his bid to continue to expand and develop his game.

“I’m at peace with how things turned out,” Luatua said.

“At the time when I was looking for new opportunities, it was either here [England] or Japan. I leaned towards here because I still wanted to grow in my rugby and the game being different here I feel like I have.

“I’m definitely settled and at peace with my decision to come here.”

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
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Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
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