Penney for his thoughts?
Nothing has changed if you ask Rob Penney.
That’s right, the Crusaders’ head coach sure has a good poker face if he’s fudging what’s really whirling in his mind.
Firmly on the back foot after three straight defeats to start the season, this isn’t how Penney, or perhaps anyone, envisioned that his tenure in charge of the Crusaders would start.
But he’s at least putting on a brave face ahead of tonight’s home opener against the Hurricanes, a match the reigning champions must win to avoid their first fourmatch losing streak in franchise history.
“Nothing has changed. The weight of expectation was there before we kicked off round one against the Chiefs. Long may that continue, because it keeps you razor sharp,” Penney said.
“You’re making sure that every little bit of detail is being taken care of, because it’s so important to so many people.”
With the team 11th on the ladder, but just four points outside the top-eight, Penney maintained that he was coping fine as pressure reaches boiling point, and that belief in the camp remained “really positive”.
That’s despite their horror injury toll, which surpassed double-figures this week with the addition of captain Scott Barrett (finger) and prop Joe Moody (Covid), and the fact the Crusaders, other than for 40 minutes against the Chiefs in round one, have been a hot mess through three weeks.
After their dream seven years under Scott Robertson, Penney was always going to be an easy target this year, even before his Super Rugby losing streak grew to eight with last week’s defeat to the Drua in Lautoka.
He has been dealt a savage hand with injuries, which started with centre Braydon Ennor going down with a knee injury while playing for the All Blacks five days after his first day in the job.
A couple of months later, Fergus Burke, groomed to replace Japan-bound Richie Mo’unga in the No 10 jersey, sustained an Achilles injury.
The only way Penney and the Crusaders can get out of the hole they’re in is to win
– and to have any chance of doing so they will need to drastically slash the errors that have doomed them thus far.
“But also we don’t want to be jumping at shadows and searching for things that aren’t there, so we’ve just got to be really mindful that we’ve got a really good process, we’ve historically had really good processes,” Penney said.
“Trust them, educate, step up, build confidence, and sometimes you need to dig into the resilience well. And that’s where we are headed now, we need to overcome that adversity.’’
“Trust them, educate, step up, build confidence, and sometimes you need to dig into the resilience well.’’
Crusaders coach Rob Penney