Defiant Penney in it for the long haul
The last time Rob Penney lost five on the bounce as a coach in Super Rugby, he found himself out of a job the following Monday.
Now, 0 and 5 and last on the standings, he remains adamant he is still the man for the job in title town.
“S*** yeah, absolutely,” he replied when asked if he essentially still believed in himself in the wake of a 26-6 defeat to the Blues at Eden Park that saw the champions of the last seven years, and 14 in total, sink to a new Super Rugby Pacific low.
This is uncharted waters for the redand-blacks. Never before had they dropped four on the bounce, as they did last week at home to the Hurricanes. Now, after being ground into the damp Eden Park turf by a superior Blues outfit in the second half, that mark has hit five, and a shell-shocked Penney is starting to acknowledge a few home truths about the situation.
As the blows, and the lows, keep coming (the Crusaders have just two points through five rounds, and are seven points off eighth), Penney concedes it’s going to be a challenge to pick the team back up for a Good Friday, six-day turnaround date with title favourites the Chiefs in Christchurch.
He lost lock Quinten Strange to a hyper-extended neck before Saturday’s latest stagger down struggle street, and saw stand-in skipper, and All Black, David Havili added to the lengthy injury-list when he limped off in the second spell with a calf strain.
“There’s been no lack of energy, and the boys are training well. But that will be a challenge,” he said of the requirement to pick his remaining fit and able men up off the mat once again. “It’s getting to a point where it’s going to affect dynamics within the team when you have results we’ve been having.
“How you do it? It’s a collective responsibility of ensuring we don’t fall into a big hole and we keep looking for that little bit of light at the end of the tunnel, we grasp on to it and we keep fighting.”
It was hard not to feel for Penney in the bowels of Eden Park on Saturday night as they lost to the Blues in Auckland for the first time in a decade.
His last stint as a coach at this level finished unceremoniously in 2021 when his Waratahs opened 0-5, and he got the “Don’t Come Monday”.
The deja-vu would unsettle the most poised of people.
There are factors in play. That’s why Crusaders boss Colin Mansbridge emphatically backed his coach prior to the Blues encounter. The injury-list is horrendous. At a time when he needs his experienced types, most of them are either rehabbing or, in the case of Will Jordan and Braydon Ennor, done for the year.
“You can’t dwell on that, and honestly we’re not dwelling on it,” responded Penney. “We’re all working hard … You look at the courageous goal-line defence, and the effort to not let the Blues in two or three times was almost heroic. There are glimpses, and no lack of effort.”
That said, these Crusaders have a lot of shortcomings. Their lineout was horrendous, losing nine on their own toss. Their attack, by their coach’s admission, is “clunky”. They fell off 44 tackles. Their discipline also cost them dearly, with Willi Heinz’ yellow card (the first of two for repeated infringements under pressure) essentially lost the game as the Blues piled on 17 unanswered points while he was cooling his heels.
Penney concedes he’s wary of confidence dropping, and the dreaded spiral of despair setting in.
“That could easily happen if they’re not well connected, if the group starts looking out the window instead of in the mirror,” he added. “Then it could spiral uncontrollably. My hope is the group is well-connected, they're proud men, we’ve got some talent to come back after the bye … who knows, if we can secure a position in the top eight, we’re in the hunt.”
As fan disquiet grows, criticism mounts, we wondered how Penney was coping?
“Being a grandfather really helps,” he said, through a forced smile. “This is really important to me and it’s important to a lot of people. You keep it in perspective. We’ve got people doing their best and fighting hard. That’s all you can ask. Sometimes that best shot is good enough, sometimes it’s not. At the moment it’s not for us.”
“Being a grandfather really helps.”
Rob Penney on how he copes with the mounting criticism after the Crusaders’ dismal start to the season