SO Dan Carter is joining the Blues.

Well ... hurrah. The ageing legend (he's earned the right to be tagged a 'legend') will strut his stuff on, but mostly, off-the-field for this new-look season.

He wants to give back (I assume on a minimal wage given rugby's financial woes) and he'll mentor the younger players we've been told. Great. His experience, work ethic and general demeanour will be invaluable to an outfit that's lacked consistency and struggled for credibility in recent times.

Carter is a decent bloke by all accounts - down-to-earth, generous and a good team man - so he's a reasonable acquisition.

But ... and there is a but ... it is just a shame that none of the play-makers Carter will impart all his wisdom to are from the Blues area and it rather highlights how dreadful the outfit has been in not being able to fine-tune or develop - call it what you like - any classy, consistent, game-breaking players in the No.10 jersey.

It's quite staggering when you reflect on that. Where have those players been? 

Now, of course, Beauden Barrett of Hurricanes and All Blacks fame (born and bred with the amber and black of Taranaki on his back) is running the Blues' cutter alongside Manawatu's Otere Black with Carter as the cover for Stephen Perofeta who was born in Whanganui and usually runs around for Taranaki. 

What has been going on? Obviously not a lot when it come to the play-makers. And don't get me started about the halfbacks. The best halfback from the Blues' area - Bryn Hall - is playing his trade brilliantly for the Crusaders after being shamelessly shelved by the Blues.  

As for first-fives you have to go back to Carlos Spencer ... but hang on he came from Levin and played for Horowhenua- Kapiti.

So where have the No.10s been in the "Blues" area? Well North Harbour's (think Rosmini College and East Coast Bays) Gareth Anscombe could play but, and I'm pretty safe in stating, was bullied out of the Blues; Northland's tough as teak (a relatively strong and hard wood for our younger readers) legend David Holwell only got six outings for the Blues at the end of his career in 2007 after 76 games for the Hurricanes.

So it rather begs the question as to what has happened to the massive rugby breeding ground that is the Blues area?

While we're on a roll just a couple of points about the Blues. 

Firstly - just like the other Super Rugby outfits in New Zealand - they're not a club. They are franchises or licence holders. So please repeat - Super Rugby outfits are not clubs.

Secondly - surely it's time to change the Blues logo. Rangitoto - seriously? And you want to engage fans? 

Tell that to the fans out in west Auckland or in Northland. From my understanding it's pretty difficult to see Auckland's extinct harbour volcano from Massey, or Whangarei or Kaikohe.

It's quite simple ...get a new logo. Ideas to me on a postcard.

WHAT have Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis, Usain Bolt and ... wait for it ... Bobby Joe Morrow all got in common?

They're all members of the exclusive 100m, 200m, 4 x 100m, Olympic gold medal club. Owens at Berlin in 1936; Lewis at Los Angeles in 1984; Bolt in 2012 in London and four years later in Rio.

Morrow swept all before him at the Melbourne Games in 1956 and his death over the weekend, once again saw a headline (made famous in "The Guardian" newspaper) resurface. It read "The greatest Olympic sprinter you've never heard of."

Morrow - who died last weekend aged 84 in a Texas hospice - was something of a sprinting phenomenon but who, after his career was ended by injury and on the back of several dodgy business ventures, became embittered.

The introduction to his obituary to him in the Washington Post sums it up: 

"For a brief period in the Eisenhower era, the world’s fastest man was arguably an American sprinter who trained on his family’s cotton and carrot farm, chased jack rabbits through the Rio Grande Valley and turned down scholarship offers from major schools to attend a small Christian college in west Texas.

"From 1956 to 1958, Bobby Morrow won all the major sprinting titles for which he competed, capped by three gold medals at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Not since Jesse Owens had a sprinter so dominated the Olympic track. Not until Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt would a man do so again."

* It should be noted that both Owens and Lewis also won gold medals at the Olympics mentioned above in the long-jump. Not bad. Also Bolt would have had a third haul by including Beijing in 2008 but one of his compatriots in the relay was subsequently found to be "juiced' up.