Thursday, July 7, 2011

The Remarkable Crusaders Roadshow

The Crusaders are on the cusp of a remarkable piece of sporting history. Although I dislike the sporting cliché of "a journey", it really applies to the Crusaders as they have gone through this entire campaign, as many commentators have put it, playing away from home.

It does a disservice to the host unions to say that the Crusaders have had no home games because, like all teams, they had games that were designated home games. It would be more accurate to say they played all their games away from their home base in Christchurch as Nelson and Timaru are part of the Crusaders region and provided home-town support that was every bit as hostile and uncomfortable for the opposition as the average Christchurch punter could muster. Playing home games in Wellington against the Hurricanes was always a bit of risk and against the Chiefs in Napier was a potential banana skin. And the now celebrated festival of rugby at Twickenham where the Crusaders put on a stunning display that had the locals gasping. Adding to the excitement, the Sharks were not charitable enough for it to be a Crusaders benefit and ratcheted up the excitement to complete the celebration.

The Super 15 is truly a long competition. To put it in context, when it started, the Christ Church Cathedral still had a spire. Since then, the Crusaders have travelled more kilometres than any team in the history of Super rugby. And at the end of the round-robin competition they had third place in the bag and still had the highest point differential by quite a long way.

Along the way, there were times when it looked like the toll was too great. There were less than stellar performances against the Highlanders and the Cheetahs. Both those performances by the Highlanders and Cheetahs were excellent team performances where they took their chances and were able to put the Crusaders under pressure. There was even room for controversy with the loss to the Reds in Brisbane. Just when the Crusaders looked like they had the game won, a refereeing decision cost them the game. To be fair to Stu Dickinson, he did communicate "no hands" while the play was going on, but it did seem to be a strange decision. But perhaps the season was summed up by the first game back after the February earthquake.

The Warratahs had basically clobbered their opposition in the first two games and were sitting pretty with maximum points. They had also nilled the Rebels in the first game and beaten the eventual finalists the Reds. Against the Crusaders, they looked like they were playing well. They had two tries in the bag and the Crusaders didn't look in it. For the Crusaders, it looked like one bridge too far in what had been a hell two weeks. But the Crusaders came back and won comfortably in a game when it looked like the emotions may just overshadow the performance. It was also one of the games the Crusaders turned out in West Coast colours in tribute to the miners who died in the Pike River disaster.

In that game it took two magic moments from Robbie Fruean to turn the game. An intercept try from a telegraphed pass then two minutes later a try in the corner and suddenly the Warratahs were a beaten team. The following week, the Crusaders crushed the old foe, the Brumbies by a staggering 52-10 in a game where the highlight wasn't the tries but a try saving tackle by Robbie Fruean again. With the Crusaders way in front, he chased down Adam Ashley-Cooper and hauled him down five metres from the line and gained a turnover. If that wasn't season inspiring stuff, then I don't know what is.

As the season carried on, there was a mixture of clinical, grinding wins (Force, Stormers, Chiefs), sprinkled with the celebrations of rugby that the Crusaders and Sharks took to Twickenham. The forward pack took on the role of the toughest, hardest pack in the competition and the backs combined to fluidly finish moves. Once injuries started to mount, there were fears the wheels would fall off, but they still ground out wins. And as the season started to wind up to the climax, and injured players came back into the mix, the Crusaders started to find top gear again.

When Sean Maitland returned to the fray, the backs looked much sharper. He set up a try for Sonny Bill when nothing was on simply by good footwork. And when he ran away with an intercept in the semi final against the Stormers, the ball could not have been better presented to him if the player in question had run up to him with the ball on a silver tray and asked, "Will there be anything else Mr Maitland?" A fully fit Sean Maitland is a real threat to any team and I have a feeling, he is going to get better - much better.

So the journey is nearly at an end. After winning the first away semi-final in 12 years, the Crusaders enter this game as favourites. In their way, the Reds, who disposed of the Blues with a flourish that any one of the Three Musketeers would have been proud of. There is obvious danger men in Quade Cooper and Will Genia but to ignore the rest of the team and target only those two would be a huge mistake. The Crusaders are smarter than that and whatever happens on Saturday night it will have been a truly remarkable season. A chapter in sporting history awaits.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Aftershocks, Coffee Shops and Christchurch's Fattest Sparrows

Three weeks ago, most Christchurch residents were left saying "Oh no, not again!" I had literally sat back down at my desk and logged back in when the whole room shook violently. I simply picked up my bag and walked out, holding the door for a moment or two for the next person to come out. Once everyone was assembled outside, it became apparent that work was over for the day and unless you had a pressing reason for going back in, you should go home. Then two hours later, an even bigger shake struck. It felt like some giant being had grabbed hold of the house and was trying to shake it off the foundations. Power went out and so out came the battery powered radio. The kids entertained themselves with the iPod, while still sitting in the doorway to the study. As before power was soon restored and I could watch what was happening on TV.

Because the bigger of the two aftershocks was classified as 6.0 on the Richter Scale, most people the next day tried to go about their normal business as much as possible. With schools closed this was a bit tricky, but I did manage to treat my children to lunch at Pizza Carto which is their favourite eating place while still logging into my work PC. Wednesday, however, most schools were back and so was work.

In and around the Art Gallery, there is not too many places where coffee can be found - and one of them was closed for the week. This meant there was a choice between the only indoor one left or the outdoor one. This choice was further rendered academic when the only indoor one's espresso machine broke down leaving a morning coffee session outside in the middle of a Christchurch winter. Still we did have a lot of company in the form of some of the most well-fed sparrows I've seen in a while. In the last few months, I suppose sparrows have had rich pickings of left-over food in hastily abandoned cafes. The disadvantage for many of these obese sparrows is it they no longer resemble sparrows but characters in Angry Birds. They didn't look too worried though.

The following day my grandmother died in Wellington and all of a sudden what was a stressful week for the nerves became a stressful week for the emotions and it was still only Thursday. I kept mostly to myself that day and spent time in the garage working on a CD/DVD tower. Keeping busy was best.

Once Friday rolled around, the never-ending week was finally coming to an end. And mother nature had another say. At 4:20 a 4.5 shake rattled the Art Gallery. At that point, and I wasn't the only one, I shut down, picked up my bag and said "That's it - I've had enough this week!"