The Robbie Deans era comes to a fitting close

The Super 14 final in Christchurch was one of those rare perfect games between two teams that are both peaking and both having complimentary styles.

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The Crusaders are archetypal fifteen-man counter-attackers, with a deadly accuracy in basic skills.

Their structure is maintained in every situation, built on a relentless platform of field position and strangling pressure. Continuity wears down defence, and lethal finishers make every yard pay eventually.

The Waratahs absorb pressure and force errors by exhausting patience. They doggedly slow ball down and feed off frustration, then equally lethal finishers capitalise on the opportunities created. Only great teams can force the issue against them because only great teams are able to score so necessarily late in the phase count.

For the first half hour, the Waratahs somehow prevented the flood of points that other teams would probably have conceded. The Crusaders game plan worked well and the visitors were stretched to breaking point time after time, but the Waratahs’ defensive pattern never fully broke down and their tryline remained uncrossed.

Twice down the other end, meanwhile, wing Lachlan Turner scored tries on the occasions that the Crusaders’ throttling pressure was broken and the Waratahs found themselves attacking. His first came from a wide kick, when Dan Carter was beaten in the air.

The second came when his captain Phil Waugh intercepted and the ball was recycled. Turner regathered his own chip, and the Crusaders were 12-3 down after having spent almost all of the first thirty minutes hammering away inside the Waratahs’ twenty-two.

If the Crusaders were mere mortals, frustration would have clouded their focus. But the Crusaders have a heavenly ability to rise to occasions, and the top gear they find in championship situations was engaged once again.

Stretching the Waratahs’ defence as before, they took play from one wing to the other, keeping their composure while jealously protecting possession.

As the advantage line was eventually broken and one tackler after another was sucked into the breakdowns, no player threw miracle passes or got isolated. The red and black wave kept crashing into the Waratahs’ defence until the overlap was created.

The Crusaders’ across-the-board skills mean that they remain potent even when their high numbers are buried at the bottom of rucks. They can finish off a late phase overlap with a lock and flanker giving the final pass to a number eight, which is what they did when Brad Thorn and Richie McCaw drew the last two tacklers to give Mose Tuiali’i a sight of the right hand corner flag.

The try brought the score to 12-11 at half-time, and Robbie Deans’ half-time speech encouraged them to seek more of the same, with patience and the discipline needed not to push passes. “Keep working” was his message for the second week running. The Waratahs would not be broken down easily by fifty-fifty passes and they would not make costly early phase errors. They must be pounded repeatedly and outlasted.

Tries to both teams were disallowed in the second half. Kurtley Beale’s score was brought back after his five-eighth partner Tom Carter was deemed offside at the preceding quick tap by the Crusaders. Then Wyatt Crockett toed the ball over the line down the other end only to have the score erased because the touch judge thought he had seen Thorn throw a punch five phases earlier.

Replays showed that Thorn had been shoulder-charged by opposite number Dan Vickerman, and his retaliation looked more threatening than actual. Nevertheless, Thorn was yellow-carded and the Crusaders were forced to play ten minutes with a one-man disadvantage.

By the time he returned the two teams had fought themselves to a virtual standstill. Carter had kicked the Crusaders into a 14-12 lead, and although neither team found a way through the defence for the remainder of the game the Crusaders played the game in the right half of the field and kicked two more goals, the first a Carter dropkick and the second a Carter penalty.

The Waratahs were out on their feet by the end, the effort of playing so long without the football taking its toll. The only possession they had managed to win was inside their own half, where they were obliged to play catch-up, and the Crusaders’ control increased incrementally as they remorselessly ratcheted the pressure.

When the final whistle blew with the home team leading 20-12, it was to bring down the curtain on a match of test match intensity. The Crusaders had deservedly won their seventh title.

Next morning, the All Black selectors named a 26-man squad for the three-test domestic sequence against Ireland and England.

They selected:

Mils Muliaina (Waikato) , Leon MacDonald (Canterbury), Sitiveni Sivivatu (Waikato), Anthony Tuitavake (North Harbour), Rudi Wulf (North Harbour), Conrad Smith (Wellington), Richard Kahui (Waikato), Ma’a Nonu (Wellington), Dan Carter (Canterbury), Stephen Donald (Waikato), Andy Ellis (Canterbury), Brendon Leonard (Waikato), Rodney So’oialo (Wellington), Sione Lauaki (Waikato), Richie McCaw (captain, Canterbury), Jerome Kaino (Auckland), Adam Thomson (Otago), Ali Williams (Tasman), Brad Thorn (Tasman), Anthony Boric (North Harbour), Greg Somerville (Canterbury), Neemia Tialata (Wellington), John Afoa (Auckland), Tony Woodcock (North Harbour), Andrew Hore (Taranaki) and Keven Mealamu (Auckland).

Jimmy Cowan (Southland) was also brought in to cover for the still-injured Leonard, and Johnny Schwalger (Wellington) is training with the group in case Woodcock’s foot takes longer than expected to heal.

New caps Wulf, Kahui, Donald, Thomson and Boric are all youngsters breathing fire this year, while Tuitavake has been very close for a few years… and downright unlucky during that time really, considering the success rate of the men that used to be selected ahead of him.

Proven performers held their place, and some who had been dropped before were recalled, like Brad Thorn, Ma’a Nonu, John Afoa and Jerome Kaino.

An extended training group convened before the Super 14 final revealed the others pushing closest to inclusion… in the second row Boric was preferred to Kevin O’Neill (Canterbury) and Tom Donnelly (Otago), while Daniel Braid’s (Auckland) claims were only ever strong enough to understudy McCaw, who was likely to start every game.

In the backs Lelia Masaga (Waikato) was kept out by Wulf, and Paul Williams (Canterbury) was only ever an option if Muliaina or MacDonald were injured.

There was no place in the wider group for Jerry Collins, Piri Weepu, Jason Eaton, Troy Flavell, Chris Masoe, Isaia Toeava or Nick Evans, for various reasons, and it will never be known how close Kieran Read, Wyatt Crockett, Stephen Brett and Casey Laulala came compared to the others because they are Crusaders and the training group excluded them out of necessity.

Read must have been the closest of those. Everyone had already assumed Collins’ replacement was the Crusader. Thomson’s game-breaking ability just got him the (surprise) nod.

Joe Rokocoko (Auckland) will have the luxury of a long recuperation if necessary, being openly recognised in the literature accompanying the announcement as one of their established world class assets. He may still be playing in the Tri Nations if his current rate of recovery is maintained.

I have been guilty in the past of graphically outlining expectations. I’m not going to in 2008. This year I will try to be satisfied with whatever the All Blacks are satisfied by.

They will win more than they lose, I’m pretty sure of that, but I’m becoming less inclined to let them carry me. I will travel the same emotional road as them, but my well-being will not be determined by the points they score.

I am going to sit back and enjoy watching them do what they do best, which is play positive rugby and to Hell with whether the other sixteen men on the field are playing in the same spirit.

It is also around about this time every year I deliver the standard lecture on complacency being a short cut to test defeat, but somehow I don’t think it’s necessary this time.

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