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Match Highlights - Ruthless Crusaders punish Lions again to defend title
By Ben Spratt
The Crusaders successfully defended their Super Rugby title as a 37-18 home victory handed the Lions more final pain at AMI Stadium.
For the second year running, the New Zealand outfit added to their record haul of titles - now at nine - as the magnitude of a repeat of last year's final appeared too much for the Lions at times in a sloppy display.
Seta Tamanivalu, set to depart for Bordeaux, and David Havili scored first-half tries and a 15th consecutive Crusaders win looked a formality, despite allowing the visitors to monopolise possession.
There was a belated riposte from Cyle Brink after the break and, although a Mitchell Drummond effort restored a healthy home advantage, Ryan Crotty was then sent to the sin bin shortly before Malcolm Marx again brought the Lions back into contention.
But Scott Barrett stretched the lead again to begin the Crusaders' celebrations early, as the wait for a first championship goes on for the Lions, whose heartbreaking run of final defeats extends to a third year in a row.
The Lions were dominant in the early stages but had only an Elton Jantjies penalty to show for their efforts by the 15-minute mark, allowing Richie Mo'unga to swiftly level.
And the visitors' failure to capitalise on their strong start proved costly as the Crusaders turned the screw and Tamanivalu charged through two challenges to cross in the corner.
Jantjies poor kicking from deep invited further pressure late in the half and, after gifting the Crusaders a scrum and valuable territory as he carried the ball over his own try-line, the Lions were punished.
Mo'unga dispatched a penalty following the scrum and soon created a second home try, claiming a Jantjies kick and driving an attack that ended with Havili lunging over.
Jantjies reduced the deficit on the stroke of half-time, yet the Lions again initially struggled to build on his penalty and Mo'unga kicked the first points after the restart.
The visitors then wrongly believed they had their first try when Jantjies stretched just short of the line, but they did not have to wait long to score as Brink thundered through from 20 yards.
A devastating move freed Drummond to cross under the posts at the other end as the Crusaders hit back, but the Lions attacked with ever more gusto and a sturdy home defence was hindered by Crotty's yellow card before Marx forged a route through on the left.
Once again the Crusaders had a response, though, and Barrett's try 10 minutes from time finally secured the result and the title.
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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