MARC HINTON IN PERTH
Last updated 05:00 15/04/2013



The clowns who jumped the fence at nib Stadium on Saturday night and made a farce of the closing stages of this Super Rugby contest managed what the Crusaders could not for an entire 80 minutes – clean breaks and some pretty fair execution.

A poor night at the office by a below-strength, and sub-par, Crusaders outfit saw them slip on the Western Force “banana skin”, stunned 16-14 in a defeat that could prove cataclysmic to the team’s finals prospects.

This is the sort of result that comes back to haunt teams. This is the sort of result over recent years that has seen the Crusaders playing crucial finals matches on the road, and ultimately coming up short of their goals.

But if they’re honest with themselves – and Todd Blackadder teams pretty much universally are – the Crusaders will acknowledge they were their own worst enemies, for all the gusto, commitment and defensive fortitude of the men from WA.

“We had the ball, we cocked it up at vital times and at key moments we couldn’t maintain pressure,” surmised a seething Blackadder afterwards. “We let them off the hook and couldn’t turn opportunities into points.”

Blackadder didn’t want to know about suggestions he had taken the Force a bit lightly by taking the opportunity to rest one or two form horses. And he was right – whomever he sent out should have been good enough to take care of business against a side that had won just one of its seven games hitherto.

“We actually prepared well, there were no excuses,” added Blackadder. “We’re not going to say we took them lightly because we didn’t. We know this was a big game for us, and we didn’t play that well. We just made too many basic errors.”

It was one of those nights when pretty much everything that could have gone wrong for the Crusaders did, from two tries being denied by the TMO, down to a succession of morons late in the piece jumping the fence and dashing down the middle of the field in various states of undress, or even fancy dress.

Perversely, the last and most annoying of the invasions came right at a time when the Crusaders had turned ball over and were launching what looked like a pretty useful counter-attack, as they searched for the game-winning score they required.

Judging by the look on Blackadder’s face afterwards, the offenders should have been left in a room alone with the Crusaders coach for their sins.

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“It was a really key moment too,” noted the coach. “We got a turnover, would have counter-attacked and it was about five-on-one. It’s poor, it shouldn’t happen at this level. The crowd needs to be far more disciplined and it ruined a good game of footy.”

It certainly didn’t dampen the spirits of a fair-sized home crowd who delighted in a continuation of their side’s fine home form against the seven-time champions of this competition. In six visits to Perth, the Crusaders have now managed just two wins to go with a pair of draws and now the same number of defeats.

It’s the second time this season the Crusaders have lost back-to-back games and left them with just one victory – in Cape Town – from their three-game tour. By any measure, this is way short of the pass mark they set themselves before leaving Christchurch.

“It’s not good enough,” said Blackadder. “Especially here when there was a lot to play for, and we just weren’t clinical. If you’re not going to be clinical you’re not going to win these big games.”

The Crusaders, in fact, were far from clinical. First they spotted the Force an early 10-0 start with some pretty shoddy defending close to their line. That clearly did wonders for the confidence of the home side who’d been bagged pretty harshly after getting dumped on the same ground by the Melbourne Rebels a week earlier.

From there the Crusaders just could not string things together for long enough to break down an effective Force defence. They went into the break down 16-8, after Luke Romano’s nicely taken try answered the early seven-pointer from Sam Norton Knight, worked their way right back into it, but just could not land the killer blow.

Romano was the standout Crusader with a typically high workrate game, and on another night might have finished with a hat-trick of tries. Corey Flynn looked sharp early on and the set piece was dominant, but the superiority was largely spurned by the inability to get that phase count up into the high numbers.

“We need to get our house in order, we need to start playing some rugby where we can maintain the ball and stop making basic errors or else we are not going to be beating anyone,” said Blackadder, leaving no one in any doubt where he stood.

Luckily for the Crusaders, they bolted from the ground pretty quickly to catch a midnight flight back to New Zealand. The less time they had to spend reflecting on this mess, the better.

- © Fairfax NZ News

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/s...than-Crusaders