Waratahs win maiden Super title
BERNARD Foley kicked a penalty a minute from time to give the Waratahs their maiden Super Rugby title with a 3332 victory over the seventimes champion Crusaders in a thrilling final yesterday.
The Waratahs dreams of a first title in their third final were hanging by a thread when the Wallabies flyhalf calmly slotted his seventh penalty of the night from 44m to send the crowd of 61 823 at the Olympic Stadium into raptures.
The crowd was a record for a Super Rugby match, beating the 55 000 that watched the Bulls beat the Chiefs in the 2009 final at Loftus.
The Waratahs also had tries either side of half time from centre Adam Ashley-Cooper, but they had to dig deep in the second half when the Cru- saders erased an early deficit and took a slender lead.
It was a first win in 12 matches over a decade against the New Zealanders, who had won the first two finals between the teams in 2005 and 2008.
The Crusaders had tries from flanker Matt Todd and winger Nemani Nadolo — his 12th of the season — along with 20 points from the boot of flyhalf Colin Slade and two from Dan Carter.
The Waratahs, as they have often this season, started at a canter and were 8-0 up inside five minutes after Foley kicked his first penalty and Ashley-Cooper finished off a breathless move by barging through three tacklers to touch down.
The Crusaders made several uncharacteristic han- dling errors and looked fragile at the set piece as two more Foley penalties extended the lead to 14-0 after 15 minutes.
The New Zealanders had too much quality to simply lie down though, and from a counter-attack from inside their own 22 on 18 minutes, No 8 Kieran Read offloaded to flanker Todd, who brushed off Ashley-Cooper’s tackle to score in the corner.
Three minutes after half time and the scores were all square at 20-20 after another sweeping Crusaders counterattack resulted in Nadolo touching down in the corner.
It was a controversial decision confirmed by referee Craig Joubert only after review of the TV pictures, which suggested the Fijian’s foot might have gone into touch.—