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. 

WHEN you're disproportionately represented in all the wrong statistics it's little wonder that there's civil unrest in the United States. 

That's why a combination of institutional racism, the huge death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic, a leader who lacks empathy and a police force that can't seemingly differentiate between white and black or right and wrong then it's little wonder society splinters in a catastrophic way.

And it won't change unless there is a seismic shift in attitudes. But will it change? Probably not given the ugliness that's evident.

"Being black in America should not be a death sentence" was a quote given plenty of prominence on social media platforms. 

It's a foreign concept for many in New Zealand (although some might dispute that) but we must not turn a blind eye or a tin ear to what's going on.

That means the rise of an under-class emerging, and growing, in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis.

You can't ignore that fact.

Mass unemployment, sub-standard health care and education, the widening of the gap when it comes to the "haves" as opposed to the "have nots" along with a lack of hope will contribute to a volatile society.

The argument that protest and the aggravation that goes with it won't happen here is fanciful.

* OF the many sporting yarns that did the rounds during the lock-down there was one that made me shudder.

When it was suggested that college rugby could be shelved a story emerged that several 1st XV players, obviously with big wraps on themselves, were contemplating returning to school next year just to play footy so that they'd "be seen".

I assume they mean seen by "agents" or the inaccurately labelled "talent spotters".

If anything was to sum up the "nonsensical fascination" we've seen with the modern-day product that is "elite" college rugby then this was it.

Unfortunately many college players, where the "ego to talent ratio isn't in sync", see themselves as superstars but can't cope when, predictably, they miss the representative cut.

You would think that playing club rugby would compensate. 

But no. 

Many of these players believe that turning out for a club (they're the outfits that the game for all New Zealand is built on) is beneath them and the ones that do rock up at a club have a supercilious, sneering attitude.

Playing for "your" club should be "aspirational" but unfortunately that quality seems to be lost on many of the "younger" players.

As an aside it might also help them if they took a "hands up (i.e I'm happy to learn and contribute) rather than a hands out (i.e. What can I get?) " attitude when considering their careers.

Mind you some rugby clubs don't help themselves by pandering to (aka paying) players or enticing them away from rival clubs. 

That's a slippery financial slope and given the current economic crisis it would seem those clubs will be, and should be, exposed.