The Crusaders celebrate a try to Codie Taylor. Photo / Photosport
The Crusaders celebrate a try to Codie Taylor. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
The Crusaders’ demolition of the Blues in Super Rugby Pacific’s first semifinal may have told a deeper story about their base cities of Christchurch and Auckland.
What was at the heart of the Crusaders’ performance was resilience, hope, energy, a sense of confidence about the direction everyone was headingand a conviction that hard work and cohesion would triumph.
A job needed doing and there was captain Scott Barrett, directing his troops magnificently. It was leadership at its simple best – a follow-me performance that inspired some of the younger, less experienced around him such as Christian Lio-Willie, Sione Havili Talitui and Tamaiti Williams to brilliantly outplay their more experienced and vaunted opposites.
Richie Mo’unga, the team’s tactical general, knew what he needed to do, and he got on with doing it, calmly and accurately.
Sometimes he was working off a plan, while at others he was able to adapt, to utilise the suite of assets - Leicester Fainga’anuku and Will Jordan in particular - he had working overtime to give him more options.
What left the deepest impression was not the ruthlessness with which the Crusaders played, but their collective acceptance that responsibility for fulfilling their ambition sat entirely with them and no one else.
There was, seemingly, a universal understanding that greatness isn’t bestowed upon teams, but is something which is earned by those brave enough to grab it.
And this is why the 52-15 hammering of the Blues, felt like it symbolised something more than rugby.
Christchurch, its CBD destroyed in 2011, has had no choice but to roll up its sleeves and rebuild itself.
Its people have become acutely aware that a city won’t magically rise from the rubble, that insurance companies will find a way to disappoint, that civic leaders will procrastinate and that the only way through adversity is years of hard, slow, painstaking work.
Life is a fight, an endless battle to get what you want and the people of Christchurch, and the players at the Crusaders, understand this.
Christchurch, not by any means perfectly or clinically, has at least moved some way towards becoming the world-class city it wants to be, and that determination and desire to graft to get there was so evident in the way the Crusaders played and the way Barrett and Mo’unga led.
The Blues, in contrast, had no means to deliver on their ambition. They want to be champions, a team that can come up with the big performances on the big occasions, but they don’t know how to convert their vision into reality.
A disappointed Beauden Barrett of the Blues after the Super Rugby Pacific Rugby Semi Final match, Crusaders Vs Blues, at Orangetheory Stadium, Christchurch, New Zealand, 16th June 2023. Copyright photo: John Davidson / www.photosport.nz
Their ball carriers were dominated. It was the ideal time for Hoskins Sotutu and Akira Ioane to show they are crunchy athletes with the ability to smash their way up the middle of the field, but they didn’t front with it on the night.
No one took ownership of the performance and the team spectacularly fell apart.
The basics collapsed and ball protection was poor, decision-making was panicked and defensive alignment was not right.
The simplest things were suddenly beyond them and rather than be surprised or outraged, Aucklanders should consider the possibility they have the rugby team which is an extension of their everyday lives.
The Blues, it could be argued, are a product of their environment, and that a city which can’t deliver on the most basic civic responsibilities shouldn’t expect to have a rugby team that can pass and catch.
Here is a city that strips its inhabitants of thousands in rates and yet can’t mow the grass berms, regularly clean out gutters and drains or capture enough drinking water despite the place being under siege from monsoon rainfalls.
This is a city that for 20 years has talked about shifting its port away from prime, waterfront real estate, of building a light rail network that will extend to the airport and providing its inhabitants with a second harbour crossing.
And yet 20 years of talking has delivered nothing, just as the last 20 years has delivered no title for the Blues.
Auckland is a city that just can’t get its act together. It can’t provide enough buses or run the trains properly, and as has been so painfully evidenced in the last few months, when the infrastructure comes under pressure from the weather, leaders go missing.
Such are the parallels between city and club, I wonder whether the Blues will only come right when the chaos around them and the endless unfulfilled and abandoned promises are replaced with definitive action.
