Anyone in or having any association with Christchurch, can remember where they were and what they were doing at 12.52 pm on February 22, 2011, when the devastating earthquake struck.
Like the 400,000 or so other residents who were in the city at the time, each of the Crusaders has his own story to tell.
Halfback Andy Ellis and prop Wyatt Crockett were, as ever, together, when the disaster unfolded. The pair were in a building across the road from the Crown Plaza Hotel, collecting a friend en route to a post-training lunch in the city centre.
If ever there is a place not to be during an earthquake, a building already covered by warning labels indicating structural damage from a previous earthquake is probably it; a fact that was noted by Crockett as he took refuge under a nearby door frame to ride out the shaking, praying "like hell" that the building would hold.
As the walls swayed, the noise of the rumble, and its violence, made it clear this was something different from what had gone before.
Although aftershocks had become routine since the 7.1 magnitude earthquake centred on Darfield five months previously, the quick dash by the pair outside into Victoria St as soon as the floor had levelled out, made it clear that this was "the big one".
"Looking across the street, there were a couple of big cracks that had opened up in the facade of the hotel, and water was pouring out into the street," Ellis recalled.
"People were emerging from everywhere, clearly shaken as we were. Some were rushing off, others were just standing around, seemingly in shock as to what had just happened."
"It was pretty major," Crockett said, "and like everyone else, I was just thinking: Get home as fast as possible."
Up the road from Victoria Square, Kieran Read and Richie McCaw had been having a yak over sushi while lunching at Merivale Mall. The pair witnessed groceries flying in all directions off shelves at the nearby supermarket, and sushi patrons close by thrown off their seats as they lost their balance, while the floor rolled under the stress of the magnitude 6.3 aftershock.
Scooting out of the mall, Read dropped McCaw off back at the Crusaders training base before trying to race across town to his Shirley home.
Pools of water were flooding many of the streets, the liquefaction that was to be such a problem for his own home was already surfacing, seeping on to the street in many places, brick walls had collapsed and there was chaos all around.
A usual 10-minute run took over half an hour, he recalled.
At Rugby Park, the ageing grandstand, successor to the structure that had been burned down by protesters during the 1981 Springbok tour, was shaken to its foundations.
Staff upstairs in the Crusaders' administrative offices grabbed anything solid they could hold on to as the building, which was later cordoned off as an earthquake risk, swayed.
Below them, Corey Flynn and Brad Thorn had been lounging on the couches "having a yarn" with John Miles in his office.
Nearby, in the players' changing room, in the bowels of the building, most of the occupants were either showering post-training or getting changed.
As with everything else among players, the race to the exits was competitive.
Luke Romano was unlucky. In the shower when the shaking began, the big lock got hit by a cold bath, and was soaking wet when he emerged as the players and staff congregated out on the training field.
Like Romano, Sam Whitelock was in the shower.
Unlike his team-mate, his path to the exit was unobstructed, and he made it out the door ahead of any of the backs, a point he was to regret highlighting a little later.
"It felt like it was all over in a few seconds but while we had been getting used to aftershocks since the earthquake the previous September, this one had felt a little bit stronger," Whitelock said.
As the players emerged in dribs and drabs, the joking began.
Whitelock recalled teasing Dan Carter about how he'd beaten him outside.
"There was a bit of laughing and joking going on, but then Willi Heinz, who had grabbed his phone on the way out, told everyone that he'd just read that there were a few buildings down in town.
"It was then that we all realised the seriousness of what had just happened.
"Pretty much everyone who was there grabbed their gear and bolted.
"Fortunately, word got around pretty quickly, once the guys all started to check in later that day, that all of our families were okay."
Virtually every player reported in on what they had found when they got back to their homes. Crockett found his empty.
Having dropped Ellis off before reaching his Waitikiri property, he arrived to find his wife, Jenna, had taken their year-old boy, Sonny, to her parents' house at Woodend.
Although a broken window was the extent of the structural damage to their property, a power outage in the area meant the family would remain out in North Canterbury for the next few days.
"It was hard to really appreciate the extent of it until I saw it all on television later that afternoon," Crockett said.
"Once you saw all the pictures, it reinforced how lucky we'd been."
Similarly, Ellis came through unscathed.
He'd arrived home to discover his daughter, Scarlett, had slept through the noise in her room upstairs.
Disaster had narrowly been avoided though, as the drawers nearby had toppled over, narrowly missing her cot.
He would find out later that a school friend, Adam Fisher, was among the casualties when PGC House came down in town.
Fisher was not to be the only tragic link the Crusaders would have to the building that collapsed on Cambridge Terrace.
Such was the family-based nature of the team, that those who would need help - such as Read, whose backyard was a mess - were quickly identified.
In Whitelock's case, he arrived home to find his flatmate in shock, sitting still in the living room, saying nothing.
"Our neighbour came outside with his kids," Whitelock remembered.
"He was quite shaken and told me he needed a smoke. He got me to help, so there I was holding his son, whom I'd never met, while he was puffing away!"
Todd Blackadder, who as coach was going to have to bring the team back together, said the process was one of his more straightforward tasks associated with the earthquake.
Coming together tightly had never been an issue for the Crusaders in times of crisis, either on or off the field.
"You just knew it [the earthquake] was going to change people's lives," he said. "You had people affected on so many levels.
"How were their kids, did they have power?
"When we got together, we talked about controlling what we could.
"That really helped us in that situation. Once things settled down and the immediate trauma had passed, we went about our work and were able to inspire others just by doing what we were good at."
The picture became clearer over the next few days, with the number of fatalities eventually confirmed at 185.
Among the victims was Philip McDonald, who was known to players and staff.
Like Ellis' Burnside High School mate, the Crusaders board member was among the 18 who died in the PGC building.
The "new normal" for residents of Christchurch ranged from prolonged power outages to extended periods without tap water in homes, badly mangled streets, a cordoned-off city centre, closed public facilities, and even evacuation from "red-zoned" houses for some residents; but daily routines had to resume.
For the Crusaders, this meant a transfer of training to the Lincoln University facility on the southeast edge of the city.
The players also quickly discovered it was going to mean a lot of time away from home, once the true extent of the damage to the now-demolished AMI Stadium (Lancaster Park to us old folks!) was known.
"We knew it was going to be hard, but it was going to be harder on our families, who had to stay behind," Blackadder said.
"One of the toughest aspects about being away so much, especially when there were aftershocks still going on, was that you were constantly worried about what was happening at home."
The return to duty, 11 days after the quake, at least gave the players something to focus on during an emotional evening in Nelson that had already been designated as a memorial to the West Coast miners who had died during an explosion at the Pike River coal mine the year before.
Wearing commemorative West Coast jerseys, the red-and-white Crusaders overpowered the NSW Waratahs on a night that was both high in emotion but also contained some sparkling rugby. Matt Todd, who'd made his Super Rugby debut five days before the earthquake struck, said the impact of the tragedy on the community didn't have to be spoken about for motivational purposes, as the players could see it for themselves as they went about their everyday lives.
"While we didn't focus on it much, in terms of pre-game rev-up speeches and the like, I think we all did feel a sense of responsibility and all knew that, for 80 minutes at least, we could take people's minds off the city, as a lot of them were doing it really tough."
Even if it could never top the lasting footprint on the city and the country that was left by the earthquake, the Crusaders' 2011 campaign was nothing if not eventful.
Aside from four trips to Nelson, two to Timaru, and extra "home" games played in Napier and Wellington, the Crusaders were worthy ambassadors for themselves and their city as Super Rugby was showcased on a thrilling occasion at London's famed Twickenham Stadium.
As is seemingly in the team's DNA, they found a way to thrive in adversity — "tough times, tougher men," Blackadder said proudly — advancing to the playoffs in third position.
They could have finished first and positioned themselves for a final at a more favourable venue had a controversial call not gone against them during the one-point loss to the table-topping Queensland Reds at Brisbane.
"After all our players had been through that year, and everything they had done, both on the field and out in the community, they didn't deserve that."
Blackadder said of the crucial 80th-minute breakdown penalty against McCaw that secured Queensland the win.
Denied a top-two spot, the Crusaders safely negotiated their qualifying semi-final before heading back to Cape Town for the second time that year, where they eliminated the Stormers.
Despite the cards they were dealt, Blackadder believed the campaign provided some valuable learning for everyone who was involved.
"A lot of innovation came out of it, such as when we couldn't train, we could still walk the match through in a room, talking about it, discussing how we would adapt to different scenarios," he said. "It made us better communicators."
Although the Rugby World Cup that New Zealand was hosting later in the year loomed in the background, and 13 of the squad would play a part in the first All Blacks side to win the tournament for 24 years, the magnitude of the other challenges the players faced through the campaign meant the event was probably less of a distraction than it had been during previous World Cup seasons.
"I don't think we had time for it," Blackadder said.
"Being on the road constantly like we were, meant that there was no option other than to focus on what was immediately in front of us all.
"It felt like we had a purpose that was greater than ourselves, and that was a situation where the Crusaders have historically been at their best."
If the final proved a bridge too far, their effort against the Queensland Reds in a charged atmosphere at Suncorp Stadium saw them depart after the five‑point loss having gained plenty of new admirers.
They hadn't lost any at home either.
"After the final, we were all pretty gutted," Whitelock said.
"We hadn't seen our loved ones for two weeks, and as we flew home late on the Sunday night [New Zealand time], it was hard to shut out the thoughts of how the game had gone and how it could have been different, even though you try to.
"Then the pilot told us that there was a huge crowd waiting for us at the airport.
"We couldn't believe it; it was after midnight when we landed, and we were coming back after a loss. To see all those people there, it was quite incredible.
"It was such a special feeling and meant so much to us as a team. To have a turnout like that, when we were just expecting our families, showed that our efforts, both on the field and in the community, had been appreciated.
"I'm not an emotional person, but that was the closest I'd come to tears that year.
"It wasn't until then that we really understood that what we'd done in adversity was pretty amazing. To not finish off what had been an amazing season with the title was a shame," Ellis said.
"We'd had huge support right through from the people at home, even though we couldn't play in front of them."
In going as far as we did, after all of that time away, we'd achieved a lot. As the season progressed, it started to feel like it was meant to be.
"That only contributed to the let-down when we couldn't win the final."
Read echoed the thoughts of his team-mates.
"It grated not to have won, it still does now, but to have all of those people there to welcome us home was pretty amazing.
"It was hard to keep the emotions in check.
"We'd lost a big game and we were all gutted, but it was just a game. The public reminded us of that by turning out like they did.
"It was incredible to see how much it had meant to the fans even though we'd lost."
It is easier, nine years on, to see and understand the bigger picture of 2011, Read admitted.
"Looking back, we can reflect on everything we did for the community, but also how tight we got as a team.
"We shared in something special and the friendships that were grown, especially being away so much, are something we will always have, a connection to what we shared.
"It was a massive year, incredible to be part of, and a time where we showed everyone what the Crusaders are all about."
Crusade On! Celebrating 25 years of the Crusaders by Matt McILraith, published by Bateman Books, RRP$59.99, is in stores now.
