Cool. When I was growing up there was this word called cool. It was the word. Everyone wanted to be it, everything cool was called it.

Nowadays in the age of Instagram and Snapface I'm not sure what the correct word is, whether in fact it's even cool to still say "cool".

But whatever it is, the Blues are IT. And the rest of us are left wondering how the heck did this happen?

How did the Blues, the awful Blues, the Lose Blues suddenly become the team that people like, in fact the hottest ticket in town?

They're expecting a crowd of 35,000 at Eden Park for Sunday's clash with the Hurricanes, the biggest crowd for any Super Rugby game in a decade.

This is the Blues we're talking about. The team that began the season looking as disjointed as ever, carved up by the Crusaders, at 1 & 2 another typically underachieving campaign seemed likely.

And then a revival of sorts,  four wins on the trot, until along came Covid. Twelve weeks of no competitive professional sport, completely off the radar it went during Lockdown.

Yet during this time the Blues became Brando, Jimmy Dean, the gunslinger rockstar team that suddenly is cool. How exactly? Two words:

First word Beauden, second word Dan. Barrett and Carter, you could not choose two players the young folk like more than those two.

And out of nowhere the Blues are cool. Whaaaaat? What am I saying?

Do I even believe the words that I've just wrote? Hard to I have to admit.

Yes I am struggling with it and struggling more to accept that it's true.

Call it bizarre, unlikely, unheard yet true. But right now the Blues are cool.