Hansen the unsung hero
Head coach Scott Robertson gets all the plaudits for the Crusaders’ success, but don’t forget about the other Scott on the coaching staff.
That would be assistant coach Scott Hansen. He’s the bloke who sits to the right of Robertson in the coaching box, the stone-faced member of the coaching staff, the one who barely bats an eyelid during a game.
He’s the man responsible for masterminding the Crusaders’ 21-7 dismantling of the Blues in the Super Rugby Pacific final at Eden Park on Saturday night.
‘‘He’d been looking at the Blues for a month,’’ Robertson said yesterday, heaping praise on his assistant coach of three years.
‘‘We wanted to go up to the Garden after they’d beaten us down here. He put some plan together. We planned for the rain, we planned for no rain . . . we’d gone deep.’’
That’s right. When the Crusaders were still tussling with the Aussies, well before they’d booked a spot in the final, Hansen was plotting the Blues’ demise.
A Crusaders halfback during their inaugural Super Rugby campaign in 1996, his carefully worked plan worked a treat.
The Crusaders stifled the Blues from the get go, pinning them deep
in their half through Richie Mo’unga, David Havili, Bryn Hall and Will Jordan kicks.
On the back of a dominant scrum and feasting lineout – the Crusaders gobbled up 10 Blues’ throws – they dominated possession and territory, allowing them to launch repeated raids.
In tricky conditions, their handling was slick, and only impressive
scrambling defence from the hosts ensured they weren’t embarrassed on the scoreboard.
But they were never really in it, even when halfback Finlay Christie forced No 8 Cullen Grace into a mistake, and turned it into a five-pointer in the 59th minute.
Hansen replaced current All Blacks assistant Brad Mooar ahead of the 2020 season, returning
from Japan, where he worked as a Sunwolves assistant under Tony Brown and Jamie Joseph for two seasons.
His return to Christchurch reunited him with Robertson and forwards coach Jason Ryan, after the pair worked together for Canterbury in 2013 and 2014.
He works closely with the inside backs and is charged with
leading the team’s attack, strategy and game planning.
In the aftermath of the Crusaders’ latest triumph, captain Scott Barrett revealed just how much work the Crusaders put into making a meal of the Blues’ lineout.
Sam Whitelock, Grace and Barrett were all over the hosts, repeatedly intercepting Kurt Eklund darts, and prompting Blues coach Leon MacDonald to wonder whether the Crusaders ‘‘had our playbook’’.
‘‘We put a lot of time into it, meeting on a day off, throwing out ideas with [lock] Quinten Strange and Jason Ryan behind the scenes. We put a lot work into it, and got the reward tonight,’’ Barrett said.
‘‘We had a lot of messages around how much hard work and effort it was going to take, to win a lot of moments in these games. Just reinforce it,’’ Robertson said, adding the turning point for his team this season was their shock loss to the Waratahs in April.
‘‘Then the Force [win the next week]. We had a great week and bang! We got our rhythm.’’
An exasperated Blues coach Leon MacDonald wondered whether the Crusaders ‘‘had our playbook’’, so comprehensive was the set-piece dominance from the now 13-time Super Rugby champions in Saturday’s final at Eden Park.
The Crusaders completed one of the great grand final heists, effectively silencing the near 45,000-strong crowd with a forward display that squeezed the life out of the previously red-hot Blues who took a franchise-record 15-match win streak into the season decider.
It mattered not. The Crusaders harassed the Blues into an incredible 10 lineout losses on their throw (they won less than half of their 19 restarts), bossed them at the scrum and won the breakdown battle comprehensively to snuff out a side that, truth be told, got a bad case of the staggers over the finals run.
Saturday’s 21-7 victory, two tries to one, was arguably even more convincing than that margin suggests, with the red and blacks in charge from go to whoa.
‘‘We encountered a very good Crusaders side who applied a lot of pressure and we were just unable get our game going which was hugely frustrating,’’ reflected a clearly dispirited MacDonald.
‘‘They were able to steal a lot of our lineout ball and put pressure on at scrum and breakdown – they’re three key areas to winning any game, let alone a final.
‘‘We were unable to play the way we wanted to play. They’ve been in a few finals, they know how to do it well, and they did.’’
Asked what went wrong at the lineout, MacDonald added: ‘‘They got up well. It was like they had our playbook there. They were reading our play and causing a lot of trouble there. We tried variations, and were just unable to get quality ball to launch off. The scrum was similar.’’.
MacDonald admitted the Blues got what they expected from the Crusaders, and just failed to respond. To that end, despite the win streak they remain very much a work in progress.
‘‘Ten missed lineouts is hard to live off. It’s as simple as that – and scrum penalties etc. We weren’t able to get any momentum which is hugely disappointing given it happened in the final.
‘‘That aside, we can still be proud of what was a bloody good season for the Blues – a 15-2 record was good, we’ve made some progress but tonight shows there’s still some work to be done.’’
MacDonald felt all was not lost at 13-0 down at halftime, though admitted that Bryn Hall’s 40thminute try had been a key moment for the visitors on the back of a pretty dominant spell.
‘‘We needed to come out in the second half and score first, and weren’t able to do that either. We weren’t able to grab the big moments – it was all the Crusaders and that’s why they’ve won six titles [under Scott Robertson].’’
Blues skipper and No 10 Beauden Barrett, outplayed on the night by Richie Mo’unga, expressed similar frustrations.
‘‘They had a strategy to sort us out at set-piece time, and certainly put us under a lot of pressure and spoiled our flow and tempo that we like to play with.
‘‘It was frustrating we couldn’t get into our game, and whenever we did get going it was not on our terms.’’