Razor takes time off to pay a visit to the Chooks
To get even the faintest edge in Super Rugby you must be openminded, so no-one flipped off their stool when Scott Robertson turned-up at the Roosters’ training base in Sydney this week.
Gone are the days when rugby union types regarded their league counterparts with a mixture of fear and disdain, a by-product of the days when the NRL clubs sent talent scouts to raid the rah-rah talent.
For Crusaders coach Robertson, whose eagerness to discuss innovative training techniques and methods was evident even when he was still playing, the time spent in Sydney before the team embarked to Melbourne to play the Rebels tomorrow night was a chance to visit the Bondibased Roosters.
‘‘We have got a good connection with [Roosters coach] Trent Robinson, he came and spent a week with us last year and I spent a week with them preseason the year before,’’ Robertson said.
‘‘I went down and connected with some of their players. They were doing some [defence] shape stuff, so it was a great morning for the boys on their day off.
‘‘You see all these names, the likes of Cooper Cronk on TV, and you get to see them in the flesh and how they train and the detail they put into it.’’
It’s not uncommon for Kiwi teams to cross the Tasman to visit NRL clubs, and see if they can cross-pollinate ideas. Given Robertson holds the defence portfolio for the Crusaders, he would no doubt have been interested in seeing if there were techniques that could be employed by his men.
In the past, before Robertson was appointed Crusaders coach in 2017, his predecessors had visited the likes of the Brisbane Broncos and the Melbourne Storm.
The Crusaders have won their last seven games in Australia, their longest winning streak in the Lucky Country, but their record against the Rebels isn’t intimidating. They have a fourtwo record, with the defeats in 2015 and 2012 two of the most lukewarm performances in the team’s recent history.