Who is the greatest Crusaders coach of all time? Photos / Photosport
OPINION:
Here's something you all know: The Crusaders are the most successful Super Rugby franchise ever, with 12 titles in 25 years. Here's another: They've had, and currently have, some of the best coaches to ever put on a tracksuit and blow a whistle.
The big question is, how to narrow down the best from Wayne Smith, Robbie Deans and Scott Robertson, three very different former All Blacks who are among the finest rugby minds New Zealand has produced?
They have all won titles and all have and will leave an indelible mark on an outfit with a unique spirit and culture for different reasons. The Crusaders have been a beacon of rugby excellence after a terrible first year in which they won only two matches (1996 is described, tongue in cheek as "the forgotten year" at the franchise but it's anything but in reality), and yet they haven't been without their issues on the field and off the field, too, since then.
Indeed, they have had to withstand a couple of tragedies in the form of the earthquakes in 2011 and the Christchurch mosque massacres in 2019. One of the mosques affected, the Mosque Al Noor, is about 5km from the Crusaders' headquarters and, in the fallout of one of the darkest days in the history of modern New Zealand, there was an inevitable backlash aimed at the franchise's name and logo.
Todd Blackadder, who never won a title at the Crusaders as a coach (although he and his team did suffer some terrible luck - in particular in 2014), nevertheless played a significant leadership role at the franchise and indeed the Canterbury province as a whole during the earthquakes and deserves a special mention, and Robertson deserves praise for his similarly empathic and authentic leadership following the horrific shootings in the city.
And apart from those four head coaches, there is only Vance Stewart, a stalwart club and provincial coach who led the franchise into professionalism in 1996 and discovered that neither he nor virtually anyone around him was prepared for it.
In the amateur rugby days of pre-1996, Auckland was considered the engine room of New Zealand rugby due to the success of the provincial team and the proverbial conveyor belt of excellence coming from schools.
That centre of excellence is now Christchurch – a place where many kids leave school with an extraordinarily high rugby IQ and where they don't have to look far for success and role models. Maybe those things are related, and a big part of that success is due to the following men.
Stewart, a former All Blacks lock, had a good run with Canterbury from 1993-96 and enjoyed Ranfurly Shield success back when the Shield was a significant part of New Zealand's rugby landscape.
It was no surprise when he was given the nod as Crusaders head coach for a bright and shiny new Southern Hemisphere competition but, as mentioned above, was successful in only two games.
The players, still getting the hang of being paid to play, prepared like amateurs and performed like them. Among their losses was a 49-18 spanking by the Blues and, more alarmingly, a 52-16 reverse to the Reds.
The Canterbury faithful quickly hankered for the good old days and opposition teams like Southland and Wellington. Stewart was replaced after one year by Wayne Smith, with skipper Richard Loe replaced by Todd Blackadder.
Blackadder, who would become All Blacks captain, enjoyed success as Smith's skipper, but his attempt at becoming the first to do the double – a title winner as a player and a coach – foundered despite the Crusaders board allowing him a decent crack at it. Instead, someone else further down this list would catch that particular wave.
Blackadder was in charge between 2009-16, a period which included two World Cup wins for the All Blacks, but he couldn't lift his side to similar success despite a squad which included Richie McCaw, Dan Carter, Israel Dagg, Sonny Bill Williams (for a couple of years), Brad Thorn, Sam Whitelock and various other New Zealand representatives.
Indeed, a major criticism was Blackadder's failure to get the best out of his elite players. His efforts in taking his nomadic Crusaders to the final in 2011 against the Reds in Brisbane after a semifinal win in Cape Town the week before, is worth celebrating, however. In the end they ran out of puff and into a Will Genia masterclass.
In the 2014 final against the Waratahs in Sydney they ran into a poor referee's decision which gifted the title to the opposition when, in the final seconds, McCaw was penalised in front of the posts for being offside (he wasn't). Craig Joubert later apologised.
A qualified schoolteacher, Smith's talents lay not only in his inside-out knowledge of the game but also his ability to pass that on to his players. It's a skill that not all coaches possess.
After taking over in 1997 from Stewart, and with the help of a talented young first-five called Andrew Mehrtens, Smith made immediate progress but few could have foreseen the success he would have in 1998 when the Crusaders beat the Blues in the final at a sold-out Eden Park, and 1999 when they spoiled the party for Tony Brown's Highlanders at Carisbrook.
Smith was a true Crusaders great, who, after a false start as head coach of the All Blacks, found a niche as an indispensable assistant before winning two Super Rugby titles alongside Dave Rennie at the Chiefs.
Smith's love of the game could be seen in his continuing to play for the Belfast club in the working class suburb north of Christchurch (it's why SBW went there) once he finished at Canterbury.
I remember facing Smith in a club match during a hailstorm at Hagley Park when I was in my early 20s. He would have been in his 30s. I'd like to say otherwise but the weather was the most memorable thing about the match.
Deans, who took over from Smith as head coach in 2000, was a completely different character to the man who became known as "The Professor". With Deans, who memorably marked his first year in charge with yet another against-the-odds final victory, this time against the Brumbies in Canberra, there was no doubt who was in charge.
A couple of paragraphs in Richie McCaw's biography The Open Side are probably revealing, although it should be said that McCaw wrote them in the aftermath of Deans' signing as Wallabies head coach after missing out on the All Blacks job. Deans took some of his Crusaders management team to Australia with him and some of their subsequent behaviour while wearing the Wallabies' No 1 kit clearly irked McCaw.
In talking about Deans' style, McCaw writes: "Robbie doesn't appear to want to be challenged by his assistants and won't allow the kind of full-on debate that Ted (Sir Graham Henry) encourages with Smithy (Wayne Smith) and Steve [Hansen]. Robbie's approach is to say 'This is what we're doing', then convince people that that's the way it's got to be. He's very good at that."
McCaw then talks about the high turnover of Deans' assistants. "Robbie's intransigence and reluctance to delegate might have been a factor." Still, it's hard to argue with Deans' record at the Crusaders: Five titles in nine years, including the loss of two finals.
Deans often led by his force of personality alone but he was a fine Super Rugby coach and he remains hugely popular in Christchurch.
Had to be. The breakdancer/skateboarder/surfer with the increasingly tenuous hairline took over an underperforming franchise for the start of 2017 and has won almost everything since.
That's three consecutive genuine Super Rugby titles – the first, in 2017, was in Johannesburg against the Lions, the first time a Kiwi or Aussie team has a won a final in South Africa, and two subsequent home finals against the Lions and Jaguares.
After Covid hit, Robertson won back-to-back Super Rugby Aotearoa titles in 2020 and 2021. Deans' record is exemplary but not even he did the "three-peat". Robertson's only miss was last year when the Crusaders missed out on the final of the Transtasman competition, a competition won by the Blues after they beat the Highlanders in the final without playing any Kiwi teams in the round-robin.
The man famously known as Razor, a former All Blacks loose forward, was seen as a maverick initially and had to start from the ground up; coaching the Sumner club team before getting a part-time gig under Rob Penney as a Canterbury assistant.
His success as Canterbury head coach suggested he had something and the way he breathes confidence into every Crusaders player under his command, no matter his level or experience, marks him as a coach of rare ability.
His winning rate of 86 per cent speaks for itself (Deans' was 74 per cent). Robertson's charisma and upbeat nature is also gold for the franchise's wider administration. His players love him but so too do his team's supporters and sponsors. A brilliant man who deserves an international team sooner rather than later.
Hagley Oval has a new head groundsman ahead of the first test of the summer.