Phil Gifford: Predicting Scott Robertson's future as Crusaders stumble

OPINION:

Sunday afternoon's game between the Crusaders and the Blues in Christchurch is of huge importance to the points table in Super Rugby Aotearoa. But it won't define the coaching of Scott Robertson.

We already know that Robertson is a world-class coach. The stumbles that the Crusaders have been making in recent weeks will have him on edge. But they're the result of personnel problems, not tactical issues.

The Crusaders can't dominate the way they have because at the moment their forwards can't rule every scrum or sweep the contest at the breakdown.

Think back to the brilliantly succinct summing up of Chiefs' co-captain Brad Weber after his team had lost 39-17 to the Crusaders in March. He was asked how the Crusaders dominated. "Scrum for a penalty. Kick to the corner. Drive. Pretty boring really, but jeez, they're bloody good at it."

Recently the Crusaders' scrum, without an injured Joe Moody, and having to play Scott Barrett at flanker, hasn't had a tight-five of four All Blacks and a Manu Samoa prop. Winning scrum penalties is no longer a formality.

Head Coach Scott Robertson of the Crusaders looks on during warmup prior to the round four Super Rugby Aotearoa match between the Blues and the Crusaders. Photo / Getty Images.

Just as damaging has been the dislocated shoulder that put openside flanker Tom Christie on the sideline in March.

Struggling at the scrum is bad enough, but there are infinitely more breakdowns in a game than scrums, and without a true scavenger like Christie the Crusaders are a racehorse in hobbles. The resurgent Chiefs, on the other hand, have lost the brilliant groundwork of Sam Cane, but have the huge good fortune to also have turnover expert Lachlan Boshier in their squad.

That heat will still focus on Robertson's coaching, not on his team's injury list, is a burden that falls on all coaches.

Coaches are always in the spotlight because by and large they're the ones who front the media, and by extension, the public, before and after games. They're usually more articulate than their younger, less worldly, players, so we all get to see and hear a lot more of them.

As a result the pressures of the job at higher levels of rugby in this country can be huge. In the amateur era I had a drunken midnight phone call from an Auckland coach who was furious about, of all things, the fact I'd used his entirely inoffensive nickname in a story. It was probably no coincidence that his team had just lost three games in a row.

Add in that, as league coach Graham Lowe once famously said, "there are only two kinds of coaches, those who have been sacked, and those who will be," and I've always felt it took a special kind of person to be brave enough to take on the job.

How thick a skin would England's coach Eddie Jones have needed when he was embroiled in what his own boss at The Rugby Union called a "brutally honest review" of Jones' position? Jones is still there, but for a control freak like him, now being under what was described as "constant review" must feel like carrying a weighty, judgemental, bureaucratic yoke.

Even our greatest coaches have had to go through various circles of sporting hell before their triumphs. Sir Graham Henry and Sir Steve Hansen share not only knighthoods and World Cup victories, but the ignominy of being vilified by fanatical Welsh fans when, in succession, both struggled for victories in their last seasons coaching Wales.

Crusaders head coach Scott Robertson and Highlanders head coach Tony Brown. Photo/ Photosport.co.nz

Our only undefeated All Black coach, Sir Fred Allen, might have had his stellar coaching career crash and burn at provincial level with Auckland. "If we hadn't won the shield in 1959 from Southland I could have been dumped. I'd been there for three seasons, and it was up and down a fair bit."

Allen's ruthless fitness sessions had initially alienated some of his players. In one of the most bizarre rugby stories I've heard, two of the senior forwards took their revenge by waiting until Allen would fall asleep on the many long bus journeys that were the norm then.

Full of beer and gas they'd tiptoe down the aisle of the bus and break wind next to him. At one stage Allen took to wrapping a piece of camphor in a hanky to act as a crude air freshener.

Success, as always, would be the key to harmony, and so it would eventually prove with Allen as first his Auckland side, and then his All Blacks, became world beaters.

However this season ends for the Crusaders, my money is on Scott Robertson's career to continue to soar to the highest levels the game can offer.